Red's Army and The Order of the Red Crosshair
by The Illusive Mann
Summary: Marcas Valitov, A.K.A. The Red Crosshairs has left the Shadow Warriors temporarily to hunt down the Shadow Man. After realizing the strength of his order though, he comes to realize that he will need a team of his own. This is Red's Army. Warning! This story contains graphic violence, suggestive language, cursing and action. This is not a self insert.
1. After Gotham

**Hello everybody, Illusive Mann here.**

**As you all should know I made "_The Red Crosshair_s" as a backstory to my character the Red Crosshairs. I wanted to give him a backstory, because he really needed one, that and he would be a really dull character without one.**

**Now, about Red Crosshairs leaving the Shadow Warriors...Marcas needed to leave the team to hunt down his father on his own. Why? Well, for certain everybody back at Warrior HQ has become good friends with him, and what would you do if you knew that they had a possibility of dying? **

**So Marcas is going on a journey to find his father. Let me tell you something though. I just received a message from the Red Crosshairs himself, and he told me that he's going to need to a team of his own to take on his father and the organization that nearly destroyed Gotham, and the Shadow Warriors.**

**He will need a team of heroes and anti-heroes, willing to take on impossible odds and new and dangerous foes that will show no mercy in battle.**

**Marcas sent me the requirements necessary to join his team, here they are:**

**NAME(HERO NAME):**

**ALIAS(CIVILIAN NAME):**

**SEX:**

**HEIGHT:**

**WEIGHT:**

**EYE COLOR:**

**NATIONALITY(U.S., China, etc.):**

**PLANET and SPECIES(If they are an alien): **

**PSYCHOLOGICAL PROFILE(Personality):**

**POWERS/ABILITIES:**

**WEAKNESS(ES):**

**WARDROBE(CIVILIAN/HERO):**

**VEHICLES(IF YOU HAVE ONE):**

******ARCHNEMESIS(IF YOU HAVE ONE):**

**BACKGROUND STORY:**

**_Also CRITERIA!_**

**1. No more regular fighter types! I already have enough badasses without superpowers. But there is an exception.**

** A. Cyborgs or robots(Cuz i'm a nerd)**

**2. MOAR ALYUNS! (I already have one alien, but diversity of space people is always good.)**

**3. People from other countries(Too many 'mericans)**

**4. Dudes(Looking at the current roster...it's going to be a sausage fest in Red's army.)**

**Also, I will be adding a few, and I do mean a few extra characters to the story just to spice things up.**

**I really hope that I can match the same notoriety that Shadow knight1121 has with his story. Also, I plan on making Marcas slightly more badass in this story this time around.**

**I hope that you enjoy it, and send me your OCs via private message with all the criteria mentioned above..**

**If you would like to say what you would like to see in this story, have any questions, or you just want to comment, comment below.**

**_ENJOY!_**

* * *

**Marcas' POV**

I finally decided to pull over and get some gas to fuel up the gas guzzler that Leonid gave me.

'_I'm really starting to regret not stealing one of the jet bikes that Shadow had. Hell, they got more miles to the gallon per fill up than the play thing that I have to drive._' I thought to myself.

I pulled in beside the gas pump and shifted the Ferrari to park. Looking around at the place around me, I could see that it was out in the middle of nowhere, and it was completely surrounded by woods and a field right in front.

I didn't expect to find a forrest anywhere within a fifty mile radius of Gotham, because the foul stench of injustice should have wiped anything good off the face of the earth anywhere around the city, but there is always an oasis in the desert.

I was about to pull my credit card out when I looked at the pump. It had a sign on it saying, 'p_ay inside only_'. This place must have had drive offs for someone to put that up.

I walked over to the gas station itself, looking into the window to see only one person inside. When I opened the door, the friendly old man waved at me and said something in cantonese, which was a language that I had never learned, nor needed to. Looking through the store I saw something that caught my eye. Right in the middle of where the freezer section was where they kept the soft drinks, every colorful bottle looking more thirst quenching than the next.

Of course I was on a strictly low caffine diet after a red bull a few weeks ago and let me tell you, it wasn't pretty. Still, I wanted something to drink, and dammit if I was going to drink something, it had to be something with caffine in it!

I didn't walk, no, I marched to the back of the store and scanned each and every plastic bottle that sat in front of me. I could have mountain dew, coca cola, pepsi, fanta...I stopped for a moment and stared at what sat in front of me. On the shelf , for one dollar and twenty-nine cents was a bottle of the delicious, sugary nectar known to the world as Dr. Pepper.

It was the first soft drink that I had when I came to America, and what I consider the best. Oleg...Leonid introduced me to the drink when we went to the American football game, my first professional sports event. I quickly opened the door and swiped the sugary goodness off the shelf.

As I was cradling the bottle like a baby, the door opened, and in came two men in ski masks. Looking between the two I saw that one had a double-barrled shotgun while the other brandished a .38-calibre revolver.

The man with the revolver pulled a bag out of his pants and put it on the counter, "All right you old shit, you know the drill."

The old man behind the counter reached under the counter and grabbed a set of keys, most likely to the register.

While the old man was fumbling with his keys, the man with the shotgun turned to the back of the store. Before he had turned I had already taken cover behind one of the aisles to load my desert eagles with live ammunition. As I was loading the clips in a stray bullet fell out of the clip in my right hand and hit the floor as hard as it could. Of course it had to make a sound, I just hoped that nobody heard it.

I turned to look at the two men at the front of the store to see the man with the shotgun looking around. He turned to speak to his partner behind him and asked, "Hey bruh, did you hear that noise just then."

His cohort turned to look around the store to see what his friend was talking about and saw nothing. "Shit Barry, you must be going crazy because I didn't hear a damn thing."

"I know what I heard man, and it sounded like something dropped somewhere."

The man in front of the counter shook his head, "Well if you thought you heard something then go check it out."

The taller of the two nodded and started walking down aisle number one, his shotgun facing down the way. He cautiously stepped forward and scanned the aisle from left to right, hoping to find nothing and have it all just be his imagination.

The man at the counter looked back again this time looking at the circular mirror that was in the corner of the ceiling. He could see his partner in the reflection, but he also saw something else. Looking in the mirror myself I could see the look in his eyes and immediately knew that now was the time to strike. I cocked both of pistols to load the ammunition in and stood up to face the thugs in front of me, only to have two weapons pointing back.

The man by the counter frowned as he looked at me. "Well, well, well, Barry would ya look at this piece of shit acting all tough and stuff. Nice guns kid, but it looks like you won't be able to take us both out."

I looked at the man at the counter, then at the other with the shotgun a few aisles away. I could kill them both right now and end this, but to tell you the truth the old man at the front is in the line of fire. I didn't learn it from Shadow, but I was taught that you shouldn't kill civilians, no matter what. I taught that to myself, but of course there are exceptions. One being when the civilian is threatening you and you have no other option, the other is when the civilian is pointing a gun at you.

The old man behind the counter pulled out a PP2000 sub-machine gun. The problem that I had was, why was he pointing the damn thing at me?

The question was answered shortly after the old man ripped off his face to reveal a young man with black goggles over his eyes, a red crosshairs in each lens.

"I guess that my father always has a contingency plan, doesn't he."

The man with goggles grinned, "Oi guess that you could say that, that or the fact that he can look into the future." The man finished in his English accent.

The other two in there dropped the revolver and shotgun and pulled out XM8 assault rifles from under the trench coats they were wearing.

I looked at the two who were now exposing the combat gear that they had on. The gear that they had was all black with two exceptions, one was the bands that they had on their arms. The bands had an eye with a red crosshair, and oddly enough their eyes had the same things going on as well.

The man with the goggles jumped over the counter and pulled back the hammer on top of his weapon and looked up at me. "You never would have guessed that you weren't the only one with these powers, did you?"

I shook my head in disbelief. I mean, I did know that the man that claimed to be my father had the same eyes that I had, but I didn't know that you could just give it to people. These men looked nothing like me, so how could they have the same eyes that I have.

So I guess that I have to find out how they got those eyes of theirs...

Before they could fire the first shot, I fired on the man to my right, just barely grazing his shoulder from the the first shot. The second hit home when it went sailing through his jugular vein, which should have cause him to bleed out, but it was obvious that he must have the regenerative capabilities that I take for granted.

The hole in the side of his neck sealed itself up, and to affirm that it worked he craned his neck to the side and grinned.

'_Shit._'

They unleashed a volley of gunfire on the end of the store where I was standing and didn't think of letting go of the trigger.

Glass flew everywhere, as well as all of the coca cola and everything else behind me. It all came pouring down in a hailstorm of sweetness and shards of glass, unrelenting with every bullet that flew over me.

In that moment, the gunfire and glass brought me back to training in Siberia. We had to crawl through pools of blood, body parts, and shrapnel to simulate the combat environment. I would have never thought that I would have to be going through a similar situation like that. The only thing is that these men had the intent to capture me, the men in training had an intent to kill.

Looking down the aisles gave me an idea. I reached into my pocket and pulled out a lighter. It was a gift from one of the warriors that was given to me, even though I don't smoke. The little thing was compact, but from what Gauntlet told me, it could shoot flames twelve feet around it. Basically it was a molotov cocktail, without the splash effect of course.

I pulled the small pin out of the top and flicked it open, but before I threw it, I looked back and saw that I was right across from the freezer that had the vodka in it.

"Now things are about to get interesting" I said to myself as I grabbed a bottle.

Pausing a few seconds, I waited until the gunfire stopped.

Then I took my chance...

I rolled out of my position and tossed the bottle first. I let it hit the floor for a few seconds for a little splash effect to occur, then I pulled out the lighter and tossed it right down the middle.

The man with the goggles jumped out of the way first and ran, while the other two stood in stupidity and quickly burned.

I looked out the window and saw that the man with the goggles had ran out the front, '_The coward flees while his comrades die, pathetic._'

Getting a running start I ran through the window pane and opened fire on the running man. I watched as he danced with every bullet bouncing off the ground. My aim was off, becuase I was actually aiming for the man's feet. I realized that I couldn't get the best accuracy with my desert eagles, rather with what I had brought with me.

So I walked over to the Ferrari and opened the trunk. Out popped a tray with two weapons, one was Leonid's AK-47 that I had customized and his Dragunov, which I also made some modifications to.

I picked up the sniper rifle and looked down the sights of the scope. Using both my crosshairs, and my heartrate I got my target lined up and pulled the trigger.

The shot went off, and you could hear it echo in the distance; As for the end result, it came a few seconds after.

I put the rifle back in the trunk of my vehicle and ran out to the spot where I last saw the coward standing and found him grabbing at his chest.

"...That (cough, cough) fucking hurt..."

I snickered, "It should have, I just shot through one of your lungs."

The figure below me laughed, then coughed up some blood, "Well, if you're expecting me to spill some information then you're going to have to see me in hell."

I kneeled down right next to him and pulled out my hammer, he looked at me with a grin on his face and shook his head, "I think that you can breathe a little longer, since you and your friends can regenerate and all."

In one swift motion I smacked him across the face with my weapon, then slammed it on his chest.

"GAAAAH!"

"Tell me, how did you get those eyes of yours?"

The man beneath me lost his grin and shut his eyes, "Have you ever had an experience, an experience where you found yourself in the prescience a god?"

"No."

The man arched his back and laughed, "You were born with those powers, with those eyes in your head. Me, and my friends, we were blessed by our god, the shadow man."

I looked at him as if he had gone mad, which in these circumstances, I would say he was already there.

He reached a hand up to my face and caressed my cheek. I immediately swatted it away and punched him, but he kept on laughing, "We were all mere mortals before he blessed us with the gift...and then he entered our minds and implanted something, a gift that we will use to enact his will."

I grabbed him by the throat and held my hammer up to strike again, "What is his will, and what is the name of the people you work for! TELL ME!"

All of a sudden he turned his head to look at me and pushed me off of him with an immense strength that rivaled even mine and pointed a finger at me as he stood up.

"If you really want to know BOY, his will is this, that you take his throne someday, that you take it and use our organization's power to conquer the world. He told us that you will lead the Order of the Red Crosshairs to victory, and that you will cleanse the earth of the Justice League, the Shadow Warriors, and every vile villain that there is. You shall lead us to glory, whether you want to or not! For our god has spoken!"

He aimed his hand behind him and summoned a portal, and in a flash of light, he disappeared.

I just sat there for a moment and processed what all he said, thinking about it, I looked back in the distance to look at Gotham City. I thought for a second that I needed to go back and bring Shadow and the rest of the warriors into this, then shook my head.

'_I told them that I would leave them out of this, I can't go back on my word now._'

This man that claims to be my father, whoever he was, had a lot of power and influence in the world. He must have great influence in the world since he financed the assault on Gotham City. I looked back at the city again and shook my head.

'_I have to do this alone, and the warriors already have enough on their plate...'_ Without a single ounce of thought put into it, an idea popped up in my head.

I ran back over to the gas station, which was now on fire, and got in my Ferrari. Sifting through the bag in the passenger seat I pulled out my cell phone and typed in few digits.

The phone rang for a bit, then somebody on the other side of the line picked up, "Hello, this is Metropolis floral design, how may I help you?"

I hesitated for a moment then cleared my throat, "Miranda it's me, Marcas."

There was a pause on the other side of the line, "Wait? Is this big red?"

I smiled recognizing the nickname that she gave me while I worked there, "Yes it is, i'm calling you to pay up for that favor that you owe me."

On the other side I could hear a thud...that was her head hitting the wall, "So after all this time not seeing me and all the good people here, all that you call for is a favor?"

"uhhhhhhh, yes..."

I could hear her trademark sigh through the phone, "Ok fine, i'll repay you for that time that you took over that day that I was sick. Now what do you want?"

"Miranda, if I recall, you are an expert with a computer, am I right?"

"Yes I am, why do you..."

"Miranda, I decided that i'm making a team, a team of vigilantes and the like minded to hunt down somebody."

There was that pause again, "I'm sorry, but can you repeat that again, because I swear that you just said that you are forming a team of vigilantes."

I nodded, "Da! That's right!"

"Marcas, what have you gotten yourself into since you've been gone?"

"Let me tell you from the beginning, then I will tell you what has happened since I have been gone.

* * *

(**One Hour Later...**)

"All right, i'll help you."

I pumped my fist into the air and hit the roof of the car as I cheered,"YES!"

"But there is one condition." I could sense her grin on the other side of the line as she said that. She was up to something.

"What is your condition?"

"You have to take me out on a date and it can't be one of those cheap burger joints either."

I just slammed my head on the steering wheel, "Great, just when I don't have any more cash on hand."

**To be continued...**

* * *

**Oh snap! Red is back, and more badass than ever! I hope that this chapter gets everybody revved up for the chapters ahead, and by the way, I will be introducing one of my new OCs first. I'm doing this to give people the time to send me their OCs, and hopefully it doesn't take too long, otherwise things will go south and fast. I also wanted to give a shout out to Daniel Wilks and Shadow knight1121, I hope that you guys didn't mind me mentioning your characters. :-)**

**Other than that, comment if you want to add something, talk about the story or if you have a question.**

**Don't forget to send your OCs, and...**

**_Until Next Time!_**


	2. Letter from my Stepfather

**Last Chapter was a little introduction of what happened after Red left the Warriors. I needed to get some closure instead of just leaping into the next story, so there it is.**

**Also I'm probably not going to introduce the first member of Red's Army until next chapter, so there's a little piece of information for you.**

**Another thing, I want to thank stonecold, jediknight, shadowknight, Leo, a****nd vampireboy for their OCs. I also have to thank light seeker for telling me about a super villain that will play a role in the future. Thank you all for your support!**

* * *

The past eight hours went by quickly, and the worst part was that I was out of gas. I got so caught up in the fight back at the gas station that I had forgotten to fill up my toy car with gas.

At this point I was cursing Leonid for giving me such a nice vehicle. I was out in the middle of nowhere, far from Metropolis, and I have yet to see a single car drive past me. Combined with everything else, I was really pissed off, and the worst part was that there was nothing that I could do. All that you could see for miles was corn, corn, corn, and guess what, MORE CORN! If something didn't come along soon, I was going to go mad!

I looked up and down the road to see if anybody was coming and didn't see a single sign of a vehicle or even civilization.

'_Where the hell am I, an island?'_I thought as I scratched my head.

Obviously I was still on the mainland, I was just entertaining the thought that I could've been on an island instead of being in corn hell! It was one million degrees outside, and I had never been in this kind of heat before, and damn it I was getting overheated! I looked back at the Ferrari and finally decided to do something about my condition.

I opened the driver side door and looked inside to see if I could find something that could save me since my cell phone had died as well. Looking through every nook and cranny in the vehicle I couldn't even find a spec of dust that could do anything, but I didn't check the glove box, which seemed to be calling me with a heavenly chorus.

Before my hand could touch it, the small compartment opened by itself and out spilled all of it's contents. There was plenty of paper in the little storage bin, and it all seemed to be nothing, until I looked closer at what seemed to be a note. I read the first few lines and found out that it was written by Leonid, my Otchim.

The note said, "_Marcas, if you are reading this, then I am dead. This note is meant for you, because I considered you to be the family that I couldn't have..._"

I couldn't help it, but tears started flowing down my face as I read the next part, "..._I wished that I could have stayed on this earth for a while longer, but the world around me was starting to get to me. I was depressed and suffered from a severe mental injury, just like yours, and I have been living with it for while...I wanted death so many times before you came into my life, you cheered me up and reminded me of my youth. This whole time I tried to fill my life with worldly things that could never fill me up, and knowledge that sent me into a state of depression. I couldn't have you with me in my apartment til the day I died, so I asked the Justice League to accept you within theit ranks early..._"

The last bit caught me off guard, and made me want to read further on, "_I knew that you would be safe in the hands of the Justice League because they are an incredible and good organization out there for the better of all mankind. I went through your things while you were gone and found the comics that you bought. I knew that you held the league above everything else, and that they would give you a home, but I didn't know what they would do to you..._"

The last sentence was something that stood out from the rest that Leonid wrote. He never lived to see what the Justice League would do to me, so how did that get in there?

I felt my answer standing, more or less hovering behind me, in the form of Doctor Fate.

"It's been a while since we last met Fate."

The hovering figure nodded, "Indeed young Valitov, it has been a while since we last met."

"Why are you here?"

He extended his hand toward the Ferrari and pulled the note out of my seat, "I came here to answer the question that you had about this sentence here. Marcas, do you know about my powers?"

I shook my head and he continued, "I can contact souls that have passed on into the next world. I came in contact with Leonid when he passed on. He told me everything that you just read in that note, and some other things that pulled at my heart."

He handed the note back to me and put a hand on my shoulder, "He told me that he was proud of you joining the Shadow Warriors, and hoped that you would find friends there."

"And I did...but I left them."

Fate stopped his hovering and landed on the ground in front of me. "Marcas.." Fate said in an oddly familiar voice, "You didn't abandon them, you have a mission of your own to do, and don't want to lose those that you love."

I recognized the voice and pulled Fate in a bear hug, "LEONID! It's you!"

"Marcas, i'm just using Doctor Fate as a medium to speak to you, i'm not actually here."

I took a step back and looked at the doctor and realized that his eyes were glowing. He continued, "My boy I gave you all of this so that you could live out your dream and save the world just like a real hero. To tell you the truth, there was more than that Ferrari that I meant to give you, I have a few other things as well in a vault."

"And let me guess, the vault is in Metropolis."

Fate nodded, "Yes, it's there. From what I can tell though, you won't be going anywhere anytime soon."

I looked back at my vehicle and turned to face Fate again, his eyes had stopped glowing.

"I'm sorry to say Marcas, but I lost my connection."

"So what do I do now?"

Fate looked at the the rear of the Ferrari and waved his hand towards it. I turned to see what he was doing and saw two gas cans that had black Xs on them.

"What are those for?" I asked.

Fate unscrewed the tops of the containers using his magic and pulled off the gas cap behind me.

"Before I lost contact with Leonid, he shared a few things with me. One of these things that he mentioned was about these gas cans that contain a special type of liquid that he developed. The other thing that he told me to take note was a will that he made while you were still with him."

**_POOF!_**

A cloud of smoke appeared in front of me, and as it cleared I saw a document sitting in front of me. I picked it up and immediately recognized Leonid's handwriting.

Fate waved his wrist and highlighted a paragraph in the document. "Since you were the only family that he had, he wanted to give everything to you. Everything including ownership of all that he had in the bank of Metropolis."

I couldn't help it, but I was starting to tear up again. Fate gave me a hand to pull me up and I took it.

"Good luck on your journey Marcas, you are going to need it."

With a snap of his fingers he disappeared, leaving me with the gas cans and Leonid's will. I didn't know what exactly was in the cans, but it was red and glowing. Oddly enough he wanted me to put this in my car, and if he thought that it would work then i'll use it.

I scrounged around the back of the Ferrari and found a nozzle that fit the cans so I could start fueling it up.

I emptied both cans and got back in the drivers seat of the vehicle. I cranked the engine to see what would happen, and didn't SEE anything different. What was different though was the sound of the vehicle. The engine sounded more like roaring thunder rather than the sports car that I had been driving around this whole time.

Then I could see the changes when all the displays turned from white and green to black and red.

Somehow the radio turned itself on, and on came the sound of someone that he had never heard before.

**Music - _Shut Up and Drive: Rihanna _**

Suddenly the car shifted and started moving on it's own. I tried to reach for the steering wheel, but for some unexplainable reason the seatbelt buckled itself in and pulled me back into the seat.

I was starting to panic when I looked at the screen that displayed all of the readings in front of me turned into a face.

"WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON HERE!" I yelled at the top of my lungs.

"I am taking you to the destination that you requested." replied an electronic female voice.

"WHO THE HELL ARE YOU!"

All of a sudden the car stopped and the digitalized eyes on the display looked right at me.

"Sir, please calm down and allow me to navigate this vehicle."

The car started off again and picked up speed, now going from zero to sixty to one hundred and seventy three.

I didn't question where the vehicle was taking me, but I sure as hell wished that Doctor fate could've told me about this before I put the weird fuel in.

When I looked out the window I saw the corn fields fly past us like they at an unbelievable pace. I was starting to lose all my worries about making it to metropolis when we zipped past a police car coming over a hill.

'_Damn it!_'

"Hey, can you slow down? We just passed by a police cruiser at 193 miles an hour!"

The face appeared back on the display again and shook it's head, "I am sorry sir, but we cannot stop until we reach the destination. On another note, our current rate of speed will help us reach the destination in 0.25 hours."

* * *

(**Thirty seconds ago...**)

Deputy Drefus had been assigned to this part of highway 82 for a reason and he knew it.

He and the other deputies didn't get along too well, which led to a fight. a couple of bruises, and eventually him being placed here. At least he was far, far away from the idiots that he fought, otherwise he would be knocking their skulls around all over again.

He took a sip of the 24oz Mountain Dew that he bought at the country store a few miles down the road and looked at his assigned partner standing outside with the radar gun.

The guy was a rookie, and had already gotten himself in trouble when he tried to use a patrol car to stop an eighteen wheeler. Now, who would be stupid enough to think that a little patrol car is going to stop an eighteen wheeler full of heavy machinery? Obviously the man hadn't graduated from the school of common sense like Drefus had.

As Dreyfus took another sip, he saw a red blur pass right by him and disappear down the hill. He thought that he was just seeing things until the rookie hopped in the vehicle with him.

"Rookie, was it me, or did I just see something whizz right past us?"

The rookie buckled his seatbelt and put the radar gun right next to him, "You did see sumthin sir, that was a car."

Drefus shifted the vehicle into drive and turned on his siren to go into pursuit. The only problem was that he couldn't see the vehicle any more, and the road was flat for miles.

"Rookie, where the hell did he go?"

The rookie picked up the radar gun and pressed a button to pull the speed that he clocked in.

"Uh sir, I clocked that vehicle in at 193."

Drefus nearly shat himself when heard that, "Jesus lord above! Who did you get? A friggin nascar driver?"

The rookie shrugged his shoulders and Drefus facepalmed.

He picked up his walkie talkie and started barking orders into it, "Listen up everybody! I just clocked some guy going 193 on highway 82, this mother trucker didn't look like he was stopping for anybody either, over."

There was radio static, then a voice came over the speaker, "Understood deputy, i'm calling in other units to make a barricade up ahead at the interchange, over."

"Yes! Rookie, it looks like you're about to see how real police officers stop somebody."

* * *

(**Further on up the road..**)

I had never felt carsick before, but now I could see a hint of green in my face in the rearview mirror.

"Please.." I pleaded, "Can you slow down a bit, I feel like I'm going to blow chunks right now."

"I am sorry sir, but we are only twenty minutes away from Metropolis. If you are feeling sick at all, you may expel the contents of your stomach out the window."

As she said that the driver's side window rolled down and fresh air hit my face which didn't do a damn thing to help. Instead I felt like I was about to spew right then and there, more so when I saw what was further on down the road.

Using my crosshairs, I could see about five police cars sitting in the middle of the road. There were officers by each vehicle, all with their weapons out and at the ready.

"Uh, do you even see the blockade ahead?" I said with a hint of worry.

She didn't respond to me, instead the vehicle sped up to push it over 200 mph.

I knew that the vehicle had a fairly useful amount of armor on it, he'll I tested it, but I didn't think that I would be using it against the law. I closed my eyes to shield myself from seeing the blood and gore that would follow with ramming through the blockade ahead. I waited for about ten seconds and didn't feel the vehicle shake, instead I felt a sense of weightlessness. Opening my eyes I could see that there wasn't any blood on the windshield or anywhere else on the vehicle, or guts for that matter.

I looked behind us in the rearview mirror to see the dumbfounded looks of the officers at the blockade and shook my head.

"I can see the confusion on your face. If you are wondering how I prevented a collision with the blockade back there, I will inform you that this vehicle is equipped with thrusters in the undercarriage."

I leaned my head back in the seat and frowned, "Why didn't I know this sooner?"

The face reappeared on the display with a grin on it's virtualized face, "It is simple, the thrusters can only use the xenothium based fuel that my developer created, so it was not relevant to use them while you were with the Shadow Warriors."

I looked at the display in confusion, "You're going to have to explain to me how you know all of this when we reach Metropolis."

"I can explain it to you now."

"You know what computer." I said with a pause.

"What?"

"Just shut up and drive."

* * *

(**Downtown Metropolis, the Bank of Metropolis**)

When the vehicle stopped moving, and my restraints came undone, I opened the door as fast as I could and got down on my knees on the pavement.

"Thank God!" I said as I leaned down to kiss the sidewalk below me.

I looked up to the tower in front of me and smiled, "I passed by this place a few times while I was here, this place is massive."

While I was basking in the glory of the building in front of me, the stupid computer decided to speak up again. "Massive would not be the right terminology in numbers Marcas, the right amount..."

**Slam!**

I kicked the door shut behind me and walked inside, and I was right, this place was massive! The lobby as you entered in had to be at least four stories tall, and the amount of people coming and going just made me appreciate the place.

As I was walking in, I noticed that the woman running one of the desks was staring at me, and not in an awkward way either. I didn't have my combat armor on, so my six pack was visible for everyone to see. It was all under a shirt of course, but I was nowhere near as nicely dressed as the rest of the people here.

I looked ahead of me and saw a huge steel door that had the name of the bank on it etched in gold. Below the huge steel door was another desk with with a security guard behind it. He glanced up at me and then went back to his computer, and whatever he was doing on it. As I walked on by he stuck his hand out to stop me and stood up.

"You know that you just can't go waltzing near the vault right?" the guard said while he grabbed by arm.

"I realize that now."

He pulled me over to his desk and sat down at his computer,"All right son, what were you about to do?"

"I was about to go into the vault to get a box."

The guard huffed, "Really? How many boxes?"

"Just one."

"Well then, I think that you need to talk to the little lady across the way before you go and do something like that, ok?"

I nodded and walked over into the sea of desks that occupied the other side of the building and found the woman that he was talking about. She looked like she was about my age, and from the absence of metal on her hand she was single.

To get her attention I rang the little bell that she had on her desk and took a seat.

While she was going through something in a filing cabinet she said, "I will be with you in a minute sir, just let me put away these folders."

I waited for about five minutes, til she eventually shut the drawers and turned to face me, "Hello there, my name is Linda, how may I help you today?"

I paused for a moment then pulled out the will that leonid gave me and showed it to her. "You see, I was involved in the will of a friend of mine, and he specifically stated that there was a box here for me."

She looked at the paper up and down to see if it was legit and nodded. Turning on me again, she opened the filing cabinet and started going through the files, as if she was looking for something, finally something popped up and she pulled out a vanilla folder with Leonid's alter ego on it.

"Well mister Valitov, you arrived just in time to get it. The box mentioned in the will is in a part of the vault specifically purposed for Lexcorp assets."

My eyes bulged out of my head when she mentioned the name of the company, as I looked at the will again.

"It's not mentioned in the will if that's what you are thinking."

I looked back up at her and saw that she was reaching into her purse to pull out something. Come to find out, she was looking for her key card.

"Mister Valitov, if you will follow me please."

I got up and followed her to a steel door guarded by another security guard. She handed him her card and scanned it so that we could go in. Inside the door was a corridor that eventually led to another checkpoint where we had to stand still as a set of invisible lasers scanned us. The last stop was a station where a console came out of the wall that required a retinal, fingerprint, and even a facial recognition scan, that added more to the sense that nobody was getting into the vault without a position at the bank.

After going through the last door we came into the main hall of the vault which went up for stories. There were walls upon walls of boxes, containers, and people moving about to put away or empty out their precious items or documents. My guide of course guided me to a more security covered part of the vault that had the all too familiar Lexcorp logo above.

I didn't have a beef with Luthor, but I did remember that one of the warriors did when he got involved with a man named Damian Cole. At least Luthor wasn't her...

"Well, if it isn't Marcas, I haven't seen you in a while."

'_Great.'_

Luthor walked over to me and put a hand on my shoulder.

My guide was looking at the both of us and grinned, "Oh my goodness! You didn't tell me that you knew Lex Luthor!"

I shrugged, "We've met before."

"Oh I concur, we met each other over in gotham city a while back. Of course you had your friends with you at the time."

I looked at his smug, bald face and grinned, "Well it's good to have such nice, caring, loving, stick with you til the end kind of friends, isn't it?"

Luthor was about to break his smile and do something when my guide interrupted, "Mister Luthor, could you let us into the Lexcorp sector of the vault please?"

Luthor reached into his pocket and pulled out a small green card and scanned it in front of the door. The locks came unsealed, and he walked away without another word said.

My guide brought me over to a wooden table in the center of the room and sat me down while she looked through all of the boxes in there.

As she was looking around I decided to ask, "Why does Lexcorp have a huge section of the bank of Metropolis' vault to itself?"

"Mister Luthor is a stockholder of the bank, meaning that he owns a part of this bank."

"How much does he own?"

She thought about it for a minute and pulled a large box out a locker about ten rows up. "Well, since he's not here i'll say that he owns at least forty-five percent of the bank."

'_Damn_.' I thought to myself as she carefully made her way down the ladder

"Here is the container that was listed, i'll leave you to open it and examine the contents for yourself."

I waited for her to walk out so that I could open the container and see what was inside, and when she did, I opened it like a child during Christmas.

Popping off the lid I could see more boxes inside, and I pulled them all out. Opening the first one, I found documents detailing locations where other containers of the red glowing fuel were around the world. The second container had some personal effects like pictures and birth certificates that belonged to him and his family.

In the third container I found a small plastic card and a note which read, "_Dear Marcas, I know that you won't be able to start off your career without the proper funding, so I used a hacking technique that Cyborg used while I was in the titans. The card in the box is connected to the money account that Lex Luthor uses for 'personal pleasures' such as entertainment and other things, and can't be traced back to you._

_I hope that you use it wisely_

_Your Friend,_

_Leonid_

I smiled at Leonid's sense of humor, especially the fact that he knew how to operate a computer of all things. The best thing out of this box was the fact that I now had the funding that I needed to take Miranda out and to take on the shadow man and his cronies.

There were two other boxes in there that caught my attention. One had a big white 'T' with a blue circle around it, while the other had had a sticker on it that read, 'property of Lexcorp, do not open'. Of course I wanted to open it, but not anywhere with cameras. I didn't bring a bag with me, but that didn't mean that I couldn't improvise.

Then I remembered watching a movie about some guy named jason who was a black ops soldier organizations he CIA. In one scene where he was in a bank, he used the bag of a garbage can to take what was his and get out of there, and that's what I was going to do. So I looked down to right and saw a garbage can with a green bag in it, and saw my opportunity to get what I needed and get out.

* * *

(**Outside**)

Lex Luthor was about to order his limo driver to take him back to Lexcorp tower when a thought crossed his mind, '_Why does that boy need access to my part of the vault?_'

He thought about it for a moment then slammed the door and ran back into the bank.

'_If he gets hold of that vial, I'm going to be more than willing to end his life then and there!'_

* * *

_(**In the Lobby**)_

I loaded everything up into the sack and made it past all of the check points to leave the vault, and believe me, I wanted to get out of there. I looked straight ahead to see if the Ferrari was still parked out front and saw a limousine sitting outside. Coming in through the front door was Lex Luthor and he looked like he was pissed.

He brought in some of his bodyguards with him, probably to take back what was his, but knowing the man that Luthor was, I wouldn't let him take it. I glanced over to the area to my left and saw an emergency exit calling me, the only problem is that Luthor would see me if I started running. My best option was to let him see me, but where would the fun be in all of that.

As a cart was passing by, I grabbed one of the bags without the guard noticing and shook it. '_There is my exit._'

I pulled a knife out of my pocket and spit the bag open to send it's contents flying everywhere. Before anyone knew it, people swarmed the center of the lobby and started picking up coins left and right.

Lex and his guards moved their way through the crowd to the other side to find nothing but the 'do not open' sticker that was on one of the boxes. He crushed the piece of paper in his hand and threw it at the vault.

"I might need to call in some help with this."

* * *

(**Back Outside...**)

I was glad that I made it out of there, the better part being the fact that I got the best of Lex Luthor. I leaned my head back against the seat behind me and sat there wondering what I was supposed to do next when the computer came on again, "Sir, you have an appointment with miss Kratt in fifteen minutes."

"Great," I said with a hint of exasperation in my voice "thanks for reminding me."

* * *

**Next chapter will feature the one who will be the 'Oracle' of the team, and of course won't be going out into the battlefield. **

**I will introduce the true first member of the team and soon, my main man Marcas just has to get Miranda to go along with his plan.**

**Review if you have any questions, comments, or just want to tell me what you would like to see, and if you have an OC that you would like to join the army then send it to me via Private Message.**

**UNTIL NEXT TIME!**


	3. The shortest chapter thus far

**Happy Memorial Day everybody!**

**Disclaimer: I do not own anything DC Comics, just my OCs**

**A/N: I felt a wee bit naughty adding a certain part of this chapter. You'll have to read for yourself.**

* * *

The whole time that I had worked with Miranda I had never been to her apartment before. I didn't know where her house was, but for some reason my car did.

Miranda wasn't exactly your average girl, she had dark black hair and she had the tips painted purple. I don't understand why people do that, but if that is what she wants then she can do it. Her choice of clothing always left little to the imagination, and she was always quiet. She never opened up to me at work for some reason and whenever I was around her she would either stare, blush, or just simply avoid me. The day before I went to DC to join the Justice League is the day that she told me to fill in for her, and the day after I left without saying goodbye.

From all that I had gathered, I could tell that she liked me. The way that she stared at me at work made me understand what way she liked me, probably for my body like most women did instead of who I was. I always worked out before going to work, so my muscles were visible whenever I would get there. I also noticed that she became jealous of other women around me. An instance one time was when a couple of students came in from Metropolis University, Miranda nearly bit their heads off, and fortunately for her our boss wasn't around or else she would have been fired on the spot.

Anyways, I made it up to her room and knocked on the door. I waited for a few seconds then knocked again, and still didn't get a response. I put my ear on the door to see if I could hear anything inside and heard something hitting the floor and then a scream. My protective instincts kicked in and I kicked down the door and ran in. I turned to see where the screaming came from and saw Miranda half-naked in her bathroom mirror. She saw me too and started yelling, "Marcas! Call before you come over!"

I covered my eyes and tried to run out of the aparment and ran into her couch, flipped over, landed on her coffee table and broke it. Miranda came running out of the bathroom with a freightened look on her face. "Oh my God Marcas, are you ok!?"

I stood up from the rubble and brushed myself off, "I think i'm ok."

She just shook her head, "Marcas, I swear that you're crazy."

She looked back at the doorway for a moment and saw the door on the floor and asked, "Why did you knock down my door?"

I shrugged, "I thought that somebody was attacking you."

A blush came across her face as she realized the purpose behind my intrusion and pulled me into a hug. "Thanks for worrying about me."

I would have hugged her back, but she didn't have anything but a pair of jeans on. She suddenly realized it too and turned a little blush into full on embarassment,"I need to get ready."

As I turned to leave the room and she grabbed the back of my pants, "But I need you to fix my door first."

* * *

(**Two hours and a meal later...**)

Miranda fell asleep on the drive back from all of the lobster that she ate that and all the wine she drank, and after all of that she was grateful of where I took her out to dinner, or as she called it, "one of the swankiest places in town." Come to find out the place was owned by Lex Luthor, thankfully enough the bald vulture wasn't there.

The food was good, but the people weren't exactly your average joes. There were plenty of people in there that I saw at the bank earlier, and some of them were still wearing that same suit and tie that they had been wearing in the bank. Many gave us stares, not because of our choice in dress, but because of how we looked, specifically Miranda. They obviously didn't have anybody that was outside of their norm inside this restaurant and I didn't give a single damn about them. Lucky for me I didn't have as much trouble because the shirt I was wearing was hugging me, and exposing my figure to the women around me, as a matter of the fact the waitress gave me her number, and a nice pinch on the ass on my way out. Good for meI didn't drink as much as Miranda did because I was going to be the designated driver.

On the way back I would look over at Miranda every now and then to see if she was still asleep and saw her sleeping soundly against the passenger seat. I smiled imagining that Tasha was lying next to me for a moment and almost drove onto the other side of the road. It seems that Doctor Fate's treatment isn't as stable as he thought it was. I was having the nightmares again, though not as dramatic. For right now though I needed to concentrate on reality, because that was what mattered.

When we did get back to her apartment I laid her down on her bed and tucked her in while I found a blanket that she had left sitting out on the couch and fell asleep there. For now I knew that I finally had my intelligence gatherer, the one that would find those that I would need for my own team...

Then it hit me...

...

...

I haven't even made a name for it yet...

* * *

(**The same time at Lexcorp Tower...**)

Lex Luthor had been thinking of ways to hunt down the Red Crosshairs without Superman or the League getting involved or even the Shadow Warriors for that matter, and right now his brain was working against him. Even though he was one of the most intelligent men on the planet he couldn't work his way around circumstances out of his control. He had already tried to come in contact with deadshot, and found out that he was locked up in blackgate. His next call went to livewire, and come to find out that she was locked up yesturday. After twenty or so calls he tried to reach Cheshire, and got nothing but a voicemail from the ninja assasin, so he decided to call in his best option that was reserved for desperate measures and desparate measures only...

"Hello, is this Wintergreen?"

"Yes," replied the voice of an elderly englishman, "This is he."

Luthor cleared his throat, "May I speak to mister Wilson?"

"I'm sorry sir, but I haven't seen Master Wilson in a couple of days, and he hasn't tried to contact me either. Would you like me to save a message for him?"

Luthor scratched his chin as he tried to deliberate the cause of Deathstroke's disappearence, "Yes, if you do see him, tell him that Lex Luthor would like to meet him for lunch in Metropolis some time."

"I will tell him you said that, good night sir."

As lex pressed the end button on his earpiece, he pressed another one on his desk, "Mrs. Graves, could you please come in here for a moment."

"I will be right in sir." replied a monotone female voice on the other side of the line.

The doors on the other side of the room opened and in came in a woman with gray pants and a gray button up jacket.

"Miss Graves, I need your help looking for someone."

She crossed her arms as she looked at him, "Who are you looking for?"

"I know who the person is and where they could be, I just need to find somebody to hunt down the pain in my side for me."

"So your hands don't get dirty."

Luthor nodded, "That's correct miss graves, now the question is who can do it?"

She thought for a moment as she looked at the floor, then an idea popped into her head, "I know somebody that just came into town that can do the job. I've worked with her before and she has yet to fail to track somebody."

Luthor's demeanor changed, and he sat up in his seat as he listened in on what she had to say.

"Her name is Eliza Bowudela, we worked together on missions all over Africa and South America."

"That sounds good and all, but where is she now?"

Graves pulled out her phone and swiped her finger over the touch pad a few times, then handed it to Luthor.

"Right now she's on her way here to visit; It's been almost ten years since we last met."

"Well then, let me make a dinner arrangement for three back at my manor and we'll talk business from there. If she is as good as you say she is then she's hired."

* * *

(**The next morning...**)

I woke up to the smell of something sweet cooking, it smelled like...

"Ah, you're awake!" Miranda said as she flipped something on the stove.

I sat up and looked over at the table to see two stacks of pancakes and licked my lips.

"One of the few North American foods that I can stand to eat for breakfast, how did you know?"

Miranda looked back and grinned, "You always seemed like the pancake type to me."

As I stood up and walked over to the table I heard somebody knocking at the door. I looked at her and she looked at the source of the knocking, then she walked over to the door and opened it.

Before her stood a man about my age with what seemed to be a crudely made cigarette in hand. "Hey Miri, how's it hangin?" he said as he took a puff.

She looked at thing in his hand then back at him, "Hey matthew, i'm kinda busy right now, can you come over later?"

The man lifted the beanie that was over his eyes to get a good look at me and nodded, "Sure brah, I'll see you later."

"Who was that?" I asked as she shut the door on him.

"That was Matthew, my nextdoor neighbor...he's a little bit of a pothead."

I finally got to sit down and enjoy breakfast when I noticed Miranda looking at me from across the kitchen. "Is there something wrong Miranda?"

She sat down and handed me a cup of coffee and put both of her hands on the table, "Why do you need a team?"

I decided not to pause for a moment to answer her question because it already answered it. So why does she need to know again?

"Marcas, if i'm going to be helping you I need to know what we're going to be getting ourselves into."

"I thought that I already told you about that?"

The last bit caused her to stand up and walk over to me for some reason. I didn't know what she was doing by her movements, but as she got close enough she pushed me away from the table and and sat in my lap. Of course my face was as red as the blood in my veins when she did this, more so when she wrapped her arms around me and laid her head on my shoulder. I didn't know what was going on, but it was starting to get awkward, especially with the tightening sensation going on in my pants.

"How long did you say it had been since you've been alone with another woman?" she said seductively in my ear.

"Not very long ago, why do y-y-you ask?" I stuttered.

She lifted her face til it was equal to mine, and without warning her lips met my own. I didn't know but for some reason I couldn't stop her, and worse enough I didn't want to. Within seconds she slowly started grinding on me, getting faster and faster with each waning second...I didn't know what cause this escalate like it did, but for some reason I didn't want it to stop. She was entirely right, I hadn't been with a woman in what felt like ages, then in one moment something hit me. It was a feeling of guilt and sadness that rushed over me as an image of Tasha smiling, and the ring that I gave her flashed before my eyes. The memories reminded me of why I hadn't been with a woman in so long and how the guilt was consuming me. In that moment I pushed Miranda off of me and onto the floor.

"I don't know what's going on Miranda, but this is outrageous! What the hell has gotten into you!."

As she stood up from the floor she put her hands on my chest and started pulling apart the shirt that I was wearing,"C'mon Marcas, aren't you a hero? Don't you save damsels in distress? Especially when that distress can only be qwelled with nasty, hot, unadulterated sex?" she said as she ran her catlike nails down my chest...wait, what?

The whole time I was trying to sort things out in my mind I didn't even look into her eyes, and when I did I saw them turn catlike, in a moments notice I was thrown across the room. I landed on a small table and grabbed one of the legs to defend myself from Miranda, but it was too late. She had already picked up the table and threw it at me, sending me through the wall behind me and into her room. I tried to get up and fight back, but there she was again, this time she had gotten hold of my desert eagles and aimed them right at me.

In that moment I knew that something was amiss, one thing was that I didn't bring my handguns in with me. Another thing was that the walls around me were blank, and I mean no pictures paint or anything. In my training back in China, we were taught about created dreams and how enemies could penetrate our minds with psychic powers. People could kill people in their sleep without even having to touch the person. So quickly realizing what was going on I ran towards the window and flew through it. I looked behind me to see if she was following and saw nothing, meaning that I was safe.

(**Back to Reality**)

I woke up in a cold sweat, but in a different environment. It looked like the hospital bay back at the hall of Justice, except it didn't have all of the high tech equipment that the league could afford. I looked to my left and saw the flash that was Miranda wrap her arms around me.

"You're finally awake! Thank God! I thought that you would be out forever."

I reached over to my hand and pulled out the IVs and hugged her back, "What happened?"

"Well, for starters, did you get into my supply?"

I looked at her like she was crazy and shook my head, "Ok good, cause the liquor that I buy is pretty strong."

I snickered, "If that was the case then I could handle it."

She smacked my arm and smiled, "Don't you talk to me like that, you've been out for almost a day."

I rubbed my arm and looked at the clock on the wall, it was past seven o' clock and the sun had gone down.

Coming to realize that I had been out forever I tried to slide out of bed to get my things, but for some reason I was shaking. Miranda had to help me walk over to the dresser by the wall and eventually let me lean against it.

She laughed as I tried to stand on my own and busted out laughing when I fell right on my ass. I looked at her with a hint of frustration in my face and she helped me up again.

"I'm sorry Marcas, but you are histerical when you're high."

"I'm not high! I'm just tipsy."

Obviously the doctor had pumped me full of drugs while I was asleep, but I was trained to deal with things like this. A few minutes later I was able to stand on my own two feet and pulled my things out of the drawers.

"You might want to cover your eyes." I said as I ripped off the hospital robe.

She covered her eyes with her hands, and stood there while I was in the nude, I wouldn't be there for long. I was quickly able to slip everything on before the nurse came back in and finally slipped my fingerless gloves back on.

The door behind me opened and in came a short old woman with a clipboard in hand.

"I see that mister Valitov has decided to wake up. I hope you got plenty of sleep."

I nodded and handed her what was left of the robe, "I'm sorry about this."

She looked at it for a moment and laughed, "It's ok, those things are so flimsy that they rip all the time. everything's fine."

The nurse looked down at the clipboard to sign a few things off and flipped through the pages. While she was doing that I looked over at Miranda and threw a tissue box at her, "What was that for?"

I grinned, "That's for hitting me in the shoulder and in case you needed a tissue before we left. Now come on we need to..."

As I was about to leave the room the old nurse shoved the clipboard in my face, "Son if you want to leave you'll have to sign this waiver first."

* * *

(**Luthor Manor**)

On the outskirts of town, much like Bruce Wayne in Gotham, Lex Luthor had his own mansion, just with more security. The wall around the building was ten feet tall, and had guards stationed everywhere. If you were from somewhere else, you could mistake it as a prison. Of course most prisons don't have at least ten different luxury vehicles sitting out front.

In the manor the smell of foreign cusines could be smelled from the entryway, all the way to the source of the smell which was the dining hall where Lex Luthor was talking with what could have been taken as an amazon, and his personal assistant. To say that Luthor was intimidated by this woman wouldn't be a lie at all, after all she was six and a half feet tall.

"So, miss Bowudela, how was the boar?"

"It wasn't terrible, though it could have been smoked a little more" She said as she took a sip of the wine sitting in front of her.

"Do you know why I wanted to meet you?"

She put the wine down and stood, "Yes I do Luthor. You want me to hunt down somebody that stole something precious from you. A certain somebody that is a former member of the Justice League from what I heard."

Lex looked over at his assistant that was sitting on the sidelines of the conversation and she shrugged her shoulders. "How much do you want for a small favor like this?" he asked as he pulled out his checkbook.

She held her hand out and shook her head, "No thank you, I'm not doing this for the money, i'm doing this free of charge because a good friend is involved, a very good friend at that." she said as she winked at Mrs. Graves across the table. Graves blushed and walked out of the room before she was embarassed by her former team mate, and from what Luthor understood former lover.

"Well then, I guess that you need to know where I tracked your target to."

The tall woman nodded and pulled out a PDA.

* * *

(**Outside the Hospital**)

I finally got all of the paper work done and I was glad to get out of the hospital. These places just bug me like no tomorrow, and it's probably because it reminded me of my captivity in Russia and China. I let Miranda guide me out because the facility was so massive, I had never seen such a massive hospital in all my life, other than Gotham General.

When we exited the building the parking lot was empty, and there was nobody about. I was about to question how she got here when I heard the all too familiar roar of my Ferrari approaching from the side. As it pulled up the passenger side door opened, and the annoying voice that was my car was heard

"Hello there mister Valitov, how are you doing tonight?"

I walked over to the passenger side and threw myself in, "I'm fine car, just wait for Miranda then drive us back to her apartment."

As Miranda got in the vehicle spoke again, "Miss Kratt's apartment is not where I have been guided."

I looked at the computer generated face, "Say what?"

"While you were in an unconcious state at the hospital, miss kratt packed her possesions necessary for your mission and loaded them in a vehicle nearby."

Miranda smiled and waved at me, "Yeah, I wanted get things ready to go so that when you got up we would head out to Detroit."

I scratched my head in confusion and asked, "Why are we going to Detroit?"

She pulled out her laptop and opened a window with a picture on it, "We're going there because that is where the first member of the red warriors is."

"Red warriors? No, no, no, Shadow already has his warriors."

"Ok, then what do we call us?"

I sat back in my seat for a moment and closed my eyes to think about this, because one does not simply come up with a name for his team in a short period of time. I thought about it for about ten seconds then an idea popped up into my head, "Red's Army."

"What?"

I grabbed Miranda by her shoulders and said again, "The name is going to be Red's Army, that's going to be the name of our group."

"Awesome! Now that we have everything sorted out then let's go!"

In a moments notice the engine turned on and my ferrari drove us to somewhere, the location I wasn't sure about, but to tell you the truth I couldn't wait to go to the motor city, the city of Detroit.

* * *

**All Right! So Marcas now has a name for his team, and he now has the ability to recruit them with the help of Miranda. **

**Next chapter I can't wait to introduce an OC that I made back when I started Red's first story. I didn't introduce him because it wasn't the right time, but I think that next chapter will be perfect. **

**Just to let you know, Miranda and Eliza are my OCs, so hands off!**

**Comment if you have any questions, comments, or just want to see something or better yet add your OC in the story and I will try to make that happen.**

**_UNTIL NEXT TIME!_**


	4. The First Soldier

**So it's about time that I got to the good stuff! In this chapter i'm bringing in a player that's been having to sit it out in the locker room for the longest time and now he's finally going to play. Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you chapter four.**

**ENJOY!**

* * *

(**Five hours away from Metropolis...**)

I decided to sleep on the way up to Michigan because I didn't want to waste my energy on places that wasn't really gooing to stop at, that and believe it or not, I was still tired. Even after sleeping for sixteen hours I was still tired, come to find out my muscles were moving the whole time that I was out, like I was living my dream in the real world. I knew that my dreams in the past had been vivid but that dream felt like it was all real. I felt the blood rushing to my face when that Miranda look-a-like sat on my lap, and the blood rushing to little Marcas downstairs, and I could feel it all...none of it made sense until I talked to Miranda about it, which was an experience in itself.

Miranda had been going to the University of Texas-Austin where she was studying psychology and a little thing called demonology on the side. What she told me from her perspective is that I may have encountered something that is referred to as a succubus. Of course I didn't know what the hell a succubus was until let me read a few demonology books that she had bought online. Apparently succubi are demons that have sex with men in their dreams and in some cases attack them, which was exactly what happened to me. I couldn't believe this, but what was I getting into? Was this my father's doing, and if so how the hell did he do it? Uncertainty clouded my mind, but for right now I was being assured some rest that I had been robbed of hours ago.

I barely opened my eyes and looked at the clock on the display for the radio and saw that it was 2:36. When we left the hospital it was 9:35, so I had been asleep for five hours and some of the signs indicated that we had passed by some small town called Howell. I didn't know where Howell was , but I just wanted to be in Detroit. Looking at the area where all of the gauges were supposed to be the computer's virtual face popped up, a smile on it's face.

"Master Valitov, we will reach our destination in approximatelty one hour, I suggest that you raise your seat so that you may take the wheel."

I closed my eyes in defiance of the crazy autopilot operating the vehicle, and tried to fall back asleep but the computer had a different plan for me. All of a sudden the car swerved and was close to hitting a guard rail when I grabbed the wheel and steered it away.

"Enjoy the rest of your ride Master Valitov."

I swear, if the computer was a person, I don't care if it is a woman, I would slap her right across the face! I was really starting to resent the fact that I had an autopilot built into this thing, and why Leonid built one in the first place. I just shook my head and drove on towards the lights that I could see etching a pattern in the rain clouds above. Up ahead was the city of Detroit, and from there I would get to meet the first member of my team, that was of course if he even wanted to join my team. I hadn't really thought of it, of course neither had Miranda.

* * *

(**Back at Miranda's apartment...**)

Miranda had left her neighbor Greg in charge of her apartment for the time being. He had known Miranda for a while and had even saved her once, so he was her go to guy if she needed something done. Of course he didn't mention to her about his addiction to mary jane, which was now clouding up the apartment. Right now he was laughing and gesturing at the air as if he was grabbing something, and grabbed nothing but the pullstring on the fan above him. The plant had already made him as high as a kite, and he was seeing something that wasn't there, or was he?

Just then a tall woman with a machete in hand appeared in place of the fan, and she looked angry. Of course greg just thought that it was all part of the high and pointed towards her.

"Wow, nice rack you got there babe."

Eliza squinted her eyes and grabbed him by the arm. He just continued spacing out and actually poked at her chest.

"Heh heh, i'm touching your boobs."

The tall mercenary had had enough of this, so she picked him up over her head and threw him into Miranda's room where his head met with the wall. As he was lying there on the bed he looked up at his attacker and waved his finger.

"That's not very nice miss melon tits, I think that you need to apologize."

Eliza walked into the room and picked him up by both arms so that they were face to face.

"You listen to me you dumbass! I came here to find one person, and you don't seem to be him."

Greg looked at her funny and put his hand on her chin, "Baby, I could be anybody that you want me to be right now."

Eliza shook her head and threw him back on the bed, "I don't even know why I sign up for these little missions anymore."

She walked into the kitchen and started tearing through all of the drawers there one by one, just to find anything that could link her to her target which obviously wasn't the pothead in the other room. As she was looking through a drawer full of notepads and office supplies she felt something hard poking her from behind. She turned to see what it was and saw the pothead sitting there with a broom in his hand.

"You thought that that was something else didn't you?" he said with a smile on his face.

She disregarded the man behind her and went back to going through the drawers in front of her. As she was going through the area under the sink and idea came to mind, but it was something that she really didn't want to do. There was no choice in the matter seeing that the pothead behind her was her only choice.

Turning around she found out that he was gone, in the matter of the fact he was on the other side of the room with a hand in his pocket.

"So, you ever felt the need to go through somebody's drawers? Cause I feel like I could go through yours right now." he said in a oddly smooth tone.

He pointed downward to his crotch and she face palmed. There was flagpole in his pants that was unmistakably recognized as an erection. Wanting to forget about the whole ordeal she turned around to go through another bunch of things that were strewn everywhere. Of course she was the one that made the mistake here, and didn't even know it. While she turned away from him, he pulled the trigger of the gun that she had mistaken for his soldier standing at attention and fired a dart into her side, which she noticed. When she tried to remove it, her strength left her and soon she couldn't lift a muscle, but she was still conscious.

Greg walked over to her motionless form and looked her in the eye, "Miss Bowudela, here and now I am going to give you two choices, ok?"

She looked up at him and nodded, "All right, choice one you go back to Lex Luthor unharmed and tell him that you lost Marcas' trail and that the apartment was boobytrapped. Choice two is you choose to resist me in your current state and I throw you out the window, which is about twenty stories off the ground. It's your choice."

Eliza thought about it for a moment when the man in front of her interrupted her thoughts, "I forgot to mention something about choice one, you tell Luthor the lie and we'll pay double whatever he's paying you."

"Let me ask one thing.." she said as she looked up at him.

"Sure, go ahead."

"Who do you work for?"

Greg grinned, "I work for a group of individuals that care very much about the safety of the Red Crosshairs, and nobody else. I'm here to ensure that he's able to complete his task so that the world can become a better place to live in."

"That sounds good enough for me, where do I sign to get my payment?"

"Wow, how low can you go."

Eliza snickered,"As low as I possibly could. I've known graves for while now, and let me say this, the bitch can provide some good company but she is lowsy in bed."

* * *

(**Luthor manor**)

"So what you are telling me is that the brat rigged the apartment with explosives?"

"Yes, that and I couldn't track him."

Luthor picked up a glass from the mantle above the fireplace behind him and filled it with a dark amber liquid and ice.

"I'm sorry to say miss Bowudela, but it's obvious that you could've tracked him."

Eliza raised a brow in confusion and Luthor continued, "I own this town and everything in it. I also own the security cameras that keep the city safe, and I know for a fact that you walked out of there, not with empty hands, but full pockets."

Eliza's demeanor didn't change, even though she knew where this was going. Lex Luthor was far from being the average billionaire idiot, and he had the pedigree and past to prove it. She reached behind her back to pull out her throwing knife and felt another hand grab hers. Turning to see who it was she saw the armor of one of the most feared men in her business, Deathstroke. The only difference was that his armor was grey and black, instead of being bronze and blue.

"I see that there is a bit of confusion in your eyes miss Bowudela...allow me to clear things up by telling you that the man behind you is the none other than the son of Slade Wilson himself, say hello to Grant Wilson AKA the Ravager."

"Thanks for the introduction, though I don't need it. I was really hoping to find the man that almost killed my father."

Eliza struggled and Grant pulled back, "There weren't any cameras near there, how could you have known?"

Luthor took a sip of his drink and put down the glass, "Simple my dear, Grant followed you there and used military grade hardware to listen on to the conversation between you and that stranger. I must say miss Bowudela, you have an interesting taste in men, because I did my research on this man using a multinational criminal identification database, and you know what came up?"

He paused for a moment to let it sink then continued, "Nothing! The man that you spoke to didn't have fingerprints or a single picture anywhere from every database that I used! I hate unknowns! The worst part is that you still got paid, and for doing nothing!"

Luthor snapped his fingers and without warning Ravager put his boot on the center of her back and started pulling both of her arms towards him.

"I don't know who the man is or who he works for, but anybody accomplice to a crime will be punished! Especially for somebody who steals from me!"

As the mastermind stepped out of the room an audible cracking noise could be heard, followed by a loud scream.

* * *

(**Detroit, Michigan**)

Miranda had somehow gotten lost and went off at the Howell exit a while back so I had to turn around and redirect her. I was glad that I had to go back, because what I saw coming into the city disturbed me.

Growing up in the luxury that I did in the poverty that was Russia, my view of America was bright. After the fall of communism, children at my school told tales of the beauty that was America, that the streets were always paved, and everybody had a car that came from Detroit. In the matter of the fact, I heard that cars came out of the city in droves, and that everybody wanted a car from there, but the site in front of me seemed to disagree.

Looking out of both windows, I saw entire neighborhoods that were empty, and if it was out west there would probably be a tumble weed rolling around. The city was bright while the parameter was sparsely lit. I could understand a city like this needing a hero, that and the man on the radio was spouting on about the corruption in the city.

"This is Johnny Duvall, the messenger of Motor City here with breaking news. The trial involving the current mayor of our fine city has struck again with unbelievable results. I have received a report telling me that the court didn't find enough evidence to support the findings that the prosecution presented yesterday, even though they produced legal documents stamped by the mayors office. This makes me sick to my stomach hearing this folks, especially with the fact that the city is going bankrupt, the police force is shrinking, and people are leaving the motor city to escape it all. This whole scenario is a travesty of justice! That and recently hearing of the allegations against the police commissioner, and get this folks, he's been using your hard earned money to place bets on the Lions games! Man I love football, but knowing that our money goes to gambling on these games just makes me sick to stomach..."

I had heard enough and was about to change the station when he started saying something else.

"Hold on ladies and gents, it looks like we have a caller on line one. Hello caller, you're on the air."

I anticipated it to be an angry citizen coming on the air to vent, but what I heard made me listen more.

"Hello" said the voice of a little girl.

"Hello" replied the radio show host, "welcome on to my radio show little girl, what's your name?"

"m-m-m-my name is Marie, and i'm seven years old."

"Wow! Seven is a lucky number you know."

"I know"

"So Marie, what do you have to say for our listeners out there?"

There was a pause on the other side of the line, "I know that all of this bad stuff is happeneing, and that all of these bad people are doing bad things, but last night I found somebody good in this city."

Duvall was on the edge of his seat as turned up his headset volume, "Ok kid, tell me, who did you meet?"

"Well, I thought it was Batman at first, but then I saw the big shiny wings that he had and..."

"Whoa whoa whoa! What?"

After that statement, I turned the knob that cranked up the volume and listened in.

"Last night me and my mommy were leaving from her job so we could get back home before the sun went down and two boys jumped out of an alley and grabbed her. I tried to save my mommy, but they just pushed away."

"And when did this winged figure come in?" Duvall interrupted.

"He came from the sky and beat up the bad guys and threw them in the trash. He looked scary to me, but then he took his hood off and showed me that he was a person like me."

"Wow, just wow. Did you hear that folks? The motor city has a guardian angel out there watching over us, who knew."

Just as he finished his statement there multiple ringing noises going on in the studio. Duvall looked at his computer and saw that all the lines were being used.

"All right Marie, i'm sorry but I have to let you go. Next caller you're live with Duvall..."

The voice of a man quickly answered him, "Hey man, I saw him too! He beat the snot out of the guy that was trying to rob my house."

The radio show host was trying to find the button that would stop the ringing noise in the studio and accidentally pressed the answer all button. In a few seconds the testimonies of what I would say hundreds of people flooded the studio and the airwaves. With a sense of urgency, Duvall did what he did best and backtracked.

"All right folks, we'll go to commercial break and try to sort out all of these phone calls. I'm Johnny Duvall and this has been a message from the messenger of Motor city."

Turning off the radio I pieced together some of the testimonies that I heard in my mind, and basically put an image up of what this man might look like from all that I just heard.

- Wings that shine in the night

- Talons as sharp as a katana

- Futuristic looking tech around the arms and legs

- A blue and white hoodie with fake horns attached to it.

- Visible bolts of electricity emitting from his hands.

Everything that I pieced together made me want this man to be on my side more and more, becuase the more I thought about it, any civilian could confuse this man for an actual monster. I called up Miranda to see if she heard the same thing on the radio and she did, in the matter of the fact it confirmed her suspicions that there truly was a hero in the motor city.

* * *

(**Metropolis, USA**)(**Hours Later...**)

The son of Deathstroke, Grant Wilson was examining the apartment that Eliza had visited the night before, and he was looking for clues. His goals were to track down the mystery man and to find the man that almost killed his father. It was funny to him all of the times that he had tried to kill his old man and failed, and yet somebody younger than him almost killed the deadliest merc in the world off with a bunch of blacklisted assassins. The word 'almost' resonated in his head, after all Deathstroke did kill the guy's girl, and tried to kill his newfound friends.

Ravager couldn't really imagine how somebody could do that after all the shit that had gone down. It must have taken immense will power to hold back something as tempting as holding somebody's life in the palm of your hand, and not wanting to extinguish such a dark and evil soul. Of course where would that leave him? Grant had tried to do what his father couldn't do and kill the titans, but that epically backfired and almost killed him. He was very close to seeing death's stroke and barely missed it, now his literal catchphrase was YOLO.

After Grant had been there for two hours, went through and scanned through everything, he decided to pack things up. While on his way out the door, a song went off behind him. He turned to see what it was and saw something that he had missed. Hidden in plain site on top of the dresser was a cellphone. Grant sat there for a few seconds until it stopped ringing then checked the small device to see who had called, and saw Miranda Kratt on there. He recognized the name of the owner of the apartment and hooked up the touchscreen cell phone to a device in one of his pouches.

It only took a few seconds to unlock the code on the phone and the voicemail opened up. He pressed the command key to listen to the first message and heard Miranda's voice echo through the speaker.

"Hey Greg, it's me. I was hoping that you would call today. Me and Marcas finally arrived in Detroit and are settling in. Call me later."

When the message had stopped, the one known as Ravager was already gone.

* * *

(**Detroit, Michigan that morning...**)

Once me and Miranda had gotten settled in last night we passed out on our beds, our separate beds. After that crazy nightmare from hell it's been awkward to be anywhere near Miranda, let alone just having a short conversation about where we would sleep. I hoped that I could get past the stupid nightmare and move on with life, but my old memories of dreams started catching up to me. Sometimes dreams can be sending you subliminal messages like don't fuck your friends, because you can ruin friendships like that.

The sun coming through the curtains is what woke me up, that and the heavenly smell of coffee, my other favorite thing to drink. I looked over to Miranda's bed and she wasn't there, then at the desk across the way and saw her typing up something on her laptop. I pushed the sheets off me and scooted my way over to get my liquid wake up call out of the pot. I picked up the pot by the handle and started chugging it's contents down like water, while Miranda stopped what she was doing to pull the pot out of my hands.

"Marcas!"

I shrugged my shoulders, "What? I like coffee."

"I also know that you can be very hyper active when you have caffeine."

I scoffed,"Are you now my mother?"

Miranda grabbed one of the pillows nearby and hit with me it,"You jerk!"

Grabbing one of the pillows off my bed I did the same,"Don't start something that you can't finish."

She held the pillow that she had and made a cocking noise with it,"Oh believe me Marcas, I can end this war before it begins."

"We'll see..."

Miranda jumped up in the air to hit me in the face with the pillow, but I blocked it. I followed up with a shot to her side and she jumped out of the way before I could make the hit.

"Just to warn you Marcas, I've been pillow fighting since I was five, so I'm a little more experienced than you are at this."

"You're a professional you say? Well why don't you prov.."

**WHAM!**

Somehow I didn't see that pillow coming, and I don't know how or why, but she caught me off guard.

"You asked for it!" I yelled as I jumped off her bed.

She tried to run for it down the hall, but I was able to get a shot in before she closed the bathroom door.

"Where is the pro running off to? I thought that you were going to end this before it began."

When the bathroom door opened Miranda was standing there with a super soaker in her hands. "What were you saying before about me not being a pro at this?"

"Thats not fair Miranda, that's bringing a water gun to a pillow fight!"

She slowly started pulling back the trigger and grinned,"All is fair in love and war Marcas, remember that the next time you challenge me to a pillow fight."

Looking closer at the tank on the back of the gun, I saw that she added an extra ingredient to the water in there, ice. "Say your prayers Marcas, because it's about to get freezing in here."

Before she could pull the trigger, I closed the gap between us and pushed the nozzle of the weapon upwards, then twisted the cap that held the contents of the tank off so that she would feel defeat this day, and this defeat is a dish best served cold. The icy water poured all over her, and the best part was her reaction.

"Oh...my...gosh that's cold!"

Of course I couldn't stop laughing at the whole thing to feel sympathy for her, after all she was about to use something that would've been completely unfair in combat. One thing that did catch my attention though was that the water had soaked her shirt all the way through, and the water was so chilly that her features were showing. Quickly grabbing a piece of ice off the floor I shoved the cube down my shorts and prayed that little Marcas would cool his jets, and that Miranda didn't see anything.

"I guess that war is over." I said as I covered my nether regions.

She pulled a sheet of toilet paper off the roll next to her and waved it like a flag,"I want to call a truce."

"Good, because I think that you just got owned."

To show some respect after that I grabbed the towel behind her and started drying her off. I scrubbed her head for a bit til I thought it was dry then worked the towel down to her shoulders.

"Hold on a second." She said as she reached for the bottom of her shirt.

To my surprise she took of her shirt in front of me, and more to it she was almost naked under there. I thought that she wanted me to continue when she took the towel out of my hands and guided me out. Hopefully I didn't do anything wrong.

* * *

(**Three minutes later...**)

She walked out without a word to me and started typing on her computer like she had been all morning long. I thought that I had done something to her that must have offended her or something, and thats why she wasn't talking to me. I'll never understand women, and hopefully me and Miranda can continue our friendship. That moment back there reminded me of the dream that I had on my way here, except I was me almost on top of her.

On her computer, Miranda was looking at the most crime ridden parts of Detroit, and compared them to where this hero had been spotted around town and found many similarities. For instance, there were more sightings and reported crimes in the poorest parts of town, than in the city center where the government and businesses were. She had highlighted the areas where he was seen most and printed out a copy for me to use.

"All right, these areas right here are where he has been spotted the most. Let me warn you now, these areas are known to have a high rate of shootouts and every other type of violent crime so I suggest that you go on foot."

"Awww, and here I thought that I was gonna be rolling up in da hood in style."

Miranda face palmed and pointed to the door,"Please leave before you screw up the English language any more."

Before I left out the door I yelled,"Word!"

* * *

After I left the hotel I decided to go out and take a look at what this city had to offer, and let me say there wasn't a lot to offer. The only things that I saw that interested me was the sports arena where the American football team played and the General Motors building. I didn't find anything else that cought my attention anywhere else around the city so I just decided to wander around for a bit.

(Six Hours Later...)

As the sun was setting, I knew that it was time for this hero to come outside to play. Just walking down the street showed that with hookers walking up to me and asking how much money that I would want to spend to have a good time with them or some of the locals looking at me with the '_you dont belong here so get out look_'. This place was nowhere near the size of Gotham, but it showed how far this place had fallen just within the short span of five years, or had it been falling longer?

I looked again at the places on the map that Miranda had highlighted, but I didn't know this city very well so I decided to ask one of the locals. He told me to not go anywhere near there because of gang activity around that area, and that it had gotten worse last week when there was a shootout between the police and what many assumed to be a local gang. This is where I needed to go, and probably where this man was. So I went there and started my search with an inceident that was unfolding in front of me.

A big black cadillac had just pulled up to a group of hookers and stopped where they were. Five men came out of the vehicle, three were armed with baseball bats, the other two had pistols stowed in the backs of their pants, and the last man to get out was only armed with a cane and a ridiculous looking outfit.

All but one of the hookers dispersed and stood her ground against impossible odds.

"Renae," the pimp yelled,"where's my monay?"

"Slickman, i'm sorry ok? I dont have the hundred grand with me right now but..."

**SLAP!**

The sound echoed down the street as the pimp ordered for his men to drag her down the alley.

"I've asked you now to bring my monay in for the past two months now, and what have I got? Let me tell you baby, i've gotten JACK SHIT! Right now I think that its time that you pay up the debt that you owe ok?"

The woman was stricken with fear and couldn't say a word so she just laid there at the end of the alleyway in the fetal position. "I'll get the money, and I'll get it soon ok."

The familiar sound of gun cocking could be heard as the pimp pulled out a revolver.

"You don't get it bitch, you don't get another chance with the slickman."

He aimed the gun at her face and was about to pull the trigger when something swooped down from the roof above and tackled one of the guards. Slickman turned to look behind him and saw the cause of the noise.

Huge metal wings spread out from the man in front of them, and sparks of electricity could be seen coming from his hands.

"The fuck are you?" Yelled Slickman.

"Your worst nightmare."said the figure back.

The guards around him started arming themselves, and the new guy didn't even flinch. I guess that I just found the one known as the hero of motor city.

One of the guards with a baseball bat charged him first, then the others followed in suit. I watched as bolts of electricity surged out of the gloves of the winged crusader. Funny enough the thugs kept up their assault, but they were no match for this man.

One guy struck from his right side and got a nice surge of electricity sent through his system. Another that was firing off a few rounds from his Glock had each round blocked by the massive metal wings that the hero had, then was taken down by a ricocheting bullet. The other two that were standing there looked like they had second thoughts of attacking the guy when Slickman fired a few shots in the air.

"You little shits better kick his ass before I busta cap in both yo asses!"

The one on the left pulled out a pair of knuckle dusters and charged the vigilante, while the other fired off a few rounds from his handgun. The vigilante reacted by wrapping his wings around him and shielded himself from the gunfire and punches. When the opportunity came he released his massive wings and pushed the thugs on either side of the alley.

"I just wiped out your thugs Slickman, whatcha gonna do?"

The pimp decided to take the cowards way out and tried to grab the woman behind him, and didn't see the baseball bat that was two inches away from his face.

**WHAM!**

The bat made as it snapped in half from the impact with Slickman's face. Renae broke down and started crying at the end of the alleyway, she almost lost her life.

The man that I could only claim as the hero of motor city kneeled down to her level and offered her his hand,"Are you all right?"

Renae paused for a moment then nodded,"Yeah, I think i'm ok."

"Are you hurt?" he asked as he moved a stand of hair out of her face.

"No, i'm fine."

When she turned to look away she showed a nasty bruise on the side of her face,"You could use an ice pack."

Looking back down the alley she stared at me for a moment then pointed,"I think that the ice pack will have to wait."

The hero looked behind him and saw me standing at the end of the alleway, my hands behind my back. "You lookin for trouble?"

I shook my head,"No, i'm actually here to meet you."

He stood up and spread his wings to cover the girl,"And why did you want to do that?"

I held my hands up and said,"Because, I want you to join my team."

**_To be continued..._**


	5. The Gargoyle and The Surprise Ending

**Disclaimer: I don't own any DC characters, just my OCs.**

* * *

"You have a team?"

"Da."

He folded his wings behind him and came closer,"A team of what, villains?"

I looked at the coat that Jayden gave me, and at the camo underneath,"Nyet, I'm what you would call between the lines of being a hero and a villain."

"So you're an anti-hero?"

I nodded,"Yep, and i'm looking to recruit you to join my squad."

Folding his arms over his chest he scoffed,"But I don't kill."

"Who said that you had to?"

The man in front of me raised an eyebrow and gave me a questioning look,"I thought that all anti-heros killed?"

I took out both my guns and showed them to him,"We do, but we also know when to spare a life."

He scratched his chin for a moment then put his hand on my shoulder,"You know what, I might join you, you just have to do a few things for me."

"And what are they?"

"First off we need a place to meet, second it needs to be somewhere in private, and third, I need to talk this over with my parents."

"You still live with your parents?" I said trying to hold back a laugh.

"No, it's just that I have a dog back at my apartment that needs to be taken care of."

"Oh."

Reaching into the back of my pocket I handed him one of the business cards that I got from the hotel that me and Miranda were staying at.

"Me and my associate are staying here in room 605. Meet us there when you can, i'll be waiting."

With that the hero of Detroit activated some kind of thruster pack on his back, spread his wings and zoomed off. There was one problem that he left though, the hooker. She was at the other end of the alley with a bat in her hand, and now she seemed to be a little bit more comfortable around me and was slowly approachng me.

"I won't bite." I said with open arms.

"I know you won't, I just don't know who you are."

Once she got close enough I put my hand in hers and started walking with her down the street.

"Where are you taking me?" she asked while trying to keep up.

I turned and flashed my bank card,"To the closest ATM so that I can buy you a ticket out of here."

For a moment she pulled me back and I stopped,"What's wrong?"

She sat down where she was and stared down at the pavement,"I can't leave, this is my home."

I looked up and down the streets and shook my head,"A beautiful woman like yourself shouldn't be living in urban hell."

"Thats nice of you to say, but where would I go? I don't know where my family even is."

I sat down next to her by the curb and looked her in her shining brown eyes,"Why don't you know where they're at?"

"Because I was abducted when I was eight. I was kidnapped by some guy that offered me a ride home and he abused me for ten years. I was sold to Slickman and brought here, and this is where home is."

Seeing the tears for in her eyes I wrapped my arm around her,"You don't have to say any more. I know someone that can help you find your home."

She looked up at me and wiped some of the water from her eyes,"Really? Who?"

"He's a member of the Justice League that goes by the name of Doctor Fate, he can help you. All you have to do is drop my name and he'll help."

In a second's time Renae grabbed the back of my head and kissed me on the lips. When she pulled away she had a smile on her face.

"Thank you." she said as she stood and pulled me onto my feet.

"Lets go get you that bus ticket to DC."

As we walked down the street the hero from earlier had listened in to the whole conversation from above and seemed to be pleased with what he saw.

'_I guess that he's trustworthy after all._' He thought as he revved up the thrusters on his back and flew off into the night.

* * *

(**At an unknown location...**)

The Shadow Man was watching the live satellite feed of Grant Wilson traveling to Detroit, and he was irritated. His agent in Metropolis failed to stay behind and kill Ravager before he could get into the apartment, and now he was on a collision course with his son and to his fortune, didn't even know it. Lex Luthor was foiling his plan before it could unfold without even knowing it, and now he was about to play catch up with the merc that was almost in the city limits.

All that he did was touch two fingers to his head and in came the englishman with the goggles, known to the Shadow Man as Rift.

"You called master?"

"Yes Chase, I need you to contact our cell in Detroit and let them know that they need to stop the man on the screen here from reaching my son."

Rift bowed and summoned a portal behind him,"Your will be done master."

The Shadow Man held out his hand,"Also please kill agent Gregory, he's failed us and I do not accept failure very lightly."

Rift bowed again and disappeared through the portal that was behind him.

Through the door that led to the command center came Red Saber who seemed to have something to smile about.

"What is it Shang?" asked the Shadow Man with frustration in his voice.

"Nothing, it's just that you didn't even punish me for failing the mission in Gotham."

The Shadow man breathed in a deep breath then exhaled,"For the last time, you didn't fail me, Deathstroke did."

Saber looked at the floor below him and nodded,"On another note, when am I going to be let loose and kill that bastard Shadow and the rest of his friends."

"You won't."

Saber looked up at the Shadow Man with a scowl on his face and even a clenched fist,"Why not?! That little prick destroyed some of my implants when I fell off of Wayne Enterprises, that and revenge would be so..."

Suddenly Red Saber was sent to the ground, clutching his head as if he was in pain. Unbeknowngst to the computer specialists all around the room, the Shadow Man was using telepathy to incapacitate the vampire.

'_Listen to me BOY, you will do as I say and leave the warriors alone for now. Do you understand?'_

Saber slowly nodded and the Shadow Man released him from his clutches. Saber stood up and bowed to his leader who was staring into his very soul with his crosshair filled eyes.

* * *

(**Back in Detroit**)

When I arrived back at the hotel, I found Miranda sleeping heavily on her bed. I decided to let her sleep for the rest of the night so that me and the possible new member of Red's Army could talk things out and see whether or not he could even come along. I hoped that he would.

Other than that though, Renae got on the bus safely and should be going through Ohio at the moment, at least I hope so. It must have been terrible to go through what she did at such a young age, being abused. No girl should have to go through that or suffer that kind of torture, instead she should have been doing what she should have been striving for as a little girl and grow up to be a healthy and lively woman. Hopefully when she comes in contact with Doctor Fate she will find her family, wherever they are.

At the door I heard a few knocks, which interrupted my thoughts at the moment. I went to the peephole to see who it was and looked down to see a man about my age, african-american to be specific, wearing a Detroit Tigers shirt in the wheelchair that he was sitting in.

'_Was this the hero of Detroit?_' I thought as I opened the door.

The man held his hand out and rolled himself in,"Hi, my name is Temarius, Temarius Green."

I held back for a moment before I decided to to shake his hand,"Marcas, Marcas Valitov."

"You don't recognize me do ya?"

I shook my head and he laughed,"Good, then that means that my disguise works. If you should know i'm the hero of Detroit, or as the thugs on the streets call me the monster of the motor city."

"Does the hero of Detroit wish to leave his treasured city?"

Temarius rolled over to the window and took one good look at the city,"I've thought about it for a bit and I think that I want to go with you, not because of the fame, it's more about the fact that I've been trying everything to try to help this city, but every time I do I just get shit thrown in my face."

Temarius turned because he felt my hand on his shoulder and sighed,"I know how you feel. Me and the warriors tried to clean up Gotham and look what happened."

The man in front of me turned his chair around to look at me,"The warriors? You don't mean the Shadow Warriors do you?."

"I do, and I didn't know that our reputation got out this far."

"Well, I am an avid news reader so I keep up with all kinds of stuff, especially a group of assassins hell bent on killing every criminal in Gotham."

"Now hold on a second there!" I yelled with a bit of intensity,"Those that died, died because of the harm that they had done to our members lives, besides we would listen to batman and his group whenever he told us to stop."

He folded his arms and looked at me as if I was joking,"That's not what I heard."

"Well, whatever, we're here to talk about you anyways."

Grabbing the small table behind me I lifted it over my head and placed it down in front of me to start our meeting. I estimated the height before I grabbed it to make sure that Temarius could reach over it and see me, and my estimates weren't off by any measure at all. He rolled up to the table and waited for me to say something.

"So, what are you forming this team for?"

I reached in my pocket and pulled out my smartphone to show him the pictures that me and the warriors took before the battle in Gotham had ended. When Temarius saw the first few pictures, his eyes were as wide as they could go. He slowly scrolled his way through to make sure that he didn't miss a detail and he didn't, he even got a glimpse of a few pictures of me and the warriors together.

"I guess that these guys are the shadow warriors?"

I nodded,"Da, and some of the others were members of the young justice league."

"I see, but why do you need a team when you have the warriors?"

"Thats the thing, I do have them, but they are my friends. My father financed the attempts on their lives, the attempts to kill the people that I cared about so that I would have nowhere to turn but him and his organization. I thought about them when I saw the message that Deathstroke delivered, I thought 'what would happen if I lost more loved ones?' Would I break? Would I become the evil that we fought against? I only knew that they couldn't be involved so I decided to leave."

Temarius flipped through some more of the pictures until he reached one of a group of three in a picture frame."I see that you had your own group of friends at one time."

If you were looking from Temarius' point of view, you could see frustration visibly on my face."The boy other than me in that picture was my best friend, the girl was the love of my life."

"What happened?"

I decided that I didn't want to go into great detail so I just said,"Deathstroke, Deathstroke happened."

Temarius caught on to what I said and handed my phone back to me,"I'm sorry for your loss."

I held my hand up in response,"There is no need for sorrow, because I think that they are still alive."

"You think?"

"I do...When Deathstroke and company assaulted Warrior HQ, he brought along two things that looked like Tasha and Andrei but weren't."

Temarius scratched his chin for moment then snapped his fingers,"Clones!"

"Thats right, now how could those have been made without living tissue?" I asked.

"They couldn't have done it without living tissue, even with todays technology it would have been impossible."

"And someday I hope to find them and give them the freedom that they deserve. Now, tell me about you. What made you into the hero that you are now?"

I could tell by the look on his face that he was concentrating then he pointed to the wheelchair,"My past goes along with how I got in this wheelchair here. Let me tell you a story."

"It was about three years ago when I graduated from MIT with a degree in Mechanical engineering. Like my dad did when he was my age I answered a calling that needed my attention, prosthetics. You see my brother served in the Marine Corps and made plenty of friends there, as well as those that had limbs blown off because of IEDs and other things. I felt sorry for those veterans because they recieved extremely basic prosthetic limbs and those that did recieve higher tech limbs didn't have the full range of movement that they did before they deployed. So I made an advanced limb system that not only connects to the nervous system like flesh and blood but also have a full range of motion like a regular arm or leg so the person with the limb won't feel out of place..."

He reached into the backpack on the the back of his wheelchair and pulled out what seemed to be lower leg armor for some kind of suit.

"Now the fact is that I wanted to market the product, but my dad didn't. He told me to get my device patented so that it wouldn't be stolen from me, and foolish me went ahead and sold it to Lexcorp which didn't just rob me of the design but also threatened to sue me if I tried to go after them. I didn't have any income coming in so I had to move in with my parents, and trust me, they weren't very happy. Soon after that my brother came back home and moved in with a friend of his in downtown Detroit, which wasn't a good idea because his friend was a coke head, but he didn't realize that. So my brother one day came over to visit, the only problem was that he wasn't acting like he usually did, which caught my dad's attention and when he looked in my brother's eyes he started beating the shit out of him. My dad may have been a doctor but he wasn't a pussy when it came to fighting. He kicked my brother out and told him if he ever came home again that he wouldn't even be let through the front door. So instead of sorting things out like he should have and get help, he decided to go after the distributor that gave him the cocaine, which actually worked. A few months of hard searching and he finally found the distributor that brought the drugs into the city, a man by the name of Emille Ardergo. Ardergo ran an opertion that ran all the way from Minneapolis to New York, and controlled all of the gangs in Detroit, so he was a pretty powerful guy, and he was almost untouchable, almost."

Temarius struggled to get the next part of his statement out, but still continued,"My brother found out where Emille was going to be one night and brought a couple of his friends from the Marine Corps there with him, armed and armored to the teeth...they went in there and shot the place up, sparing the hookers that were in there too. They took whatever explosives they could find and blew up the place just to make sure that Emille would be gone for good, but they misjudged. From what I gathered from one of the guys that was in the raid, Emille got away, and my brother disappeared. The next week we were having a cookout with a bunch of people from our church when three big, black, SUVs drove by and opened fire on us...I knew some of the people that got caught in the crossfire and found myself lucky. All that happened to me was a stray bullet hitting my spinal cord, disabling me from the waist down. The damage was bad enough that even my dad couldn't remove the bullet without killing me, so I was paralyzed for good or not..."

Reaching onto the table he pulled the armor onto his legs and attached them with clamps. I watched in awe as he slowly stood up out of his wheelchair and used his hand to touch the ceiling.

"I wasn't going to let my degree go to waste so I built me this baby so that I could get around and do something else on the side."

"Fight Crime?" I asked.

"Yes, I wanted to find the man responsible for this and make him pay for what he did by going to jail so I made some armored plating for my chest, my gauntlets and claws that shoot electricity and other things, and then I made the wings and booster pack."

"What about the hoodie with the horns?"

He smiled as he pulled the said clothing out of his bookbag and put it on,"I made this after the criminals started calling me a monster."

Sitting back I looked at his costume that he had with him and added the wings and upper armor. From the picture in my head he looked sort of like a demon of some kind, I just couldn't form the words for it.

"It took a while for me to make up a name, but just a few weeks ago I came up with the name Gargoyle."

I nodded in agreement and stood up with him,"Well Gargoyle, do you want to come along with us?"

Temarius looked over at Miranda for a moment then back at me,"I think I do."

Catching him off guard I grabbed his hand and shook it,"Good, welcome aboard."

* * *

(**Twenty minutes** **outside of Detroit**)

Flying down the highway on a motorcycle, Grant Wilson sought to make it to Detroit and quick. His target, the man that blinded Deathstroke, was in Detroit and he didn't have very long to track him down before he would be on the move again.

'_I can't wait to ask him how it felt to hold that bastard's life in his hand_' he thought as he passed by a tractor trailer.

'_My old man treated me like shit just to make me like him. So I try to waste him and he kicks my ass, then__ out of the blue comes this bastard._' he paused for a moment as he imagined what happened in his head using the picture that he had to work off of. He would have almost run into the SUV that was in front of him if it wasn't for his ears kicking in.

Grant couldn't wait to reach the destination of the tracking beacon that was in the container and surprise this guy. This mission was never about Luthor's money, it had been entirely about getting this guy and killing him so that Grant would be the only one in the Wilson family that almost killed Deathstroke the Terminator. Today he would prove himself to his father who was the best and who really deserved to be who's apprentice in the first place.

In the skies above the highway, a news helicopter was following him through every swerve and movement, preparing to do something unexpected to him. One of the people inside pulled out an AT4 and aimed it right at Grant's rear wheel. As he aimed the rocket launcher, designed to look like a camera, his eyes turned to crosshairs and he pulled the trigger.

Down below Grant heard the shot and pulled on the accelerator to get away from the projectile above. He looked in one of his rearview mirrors and caught a glance of the rocket slowly approaching from behind, there seemed to be no way out. Up ahead he saw an exit ramp and took his chance to get off the highway and escape the death that was coming closer and closer to that rear wheel. As soon as he got off the ramp, he ditched the bike and rolled off into a patch of nearby bushes.

A moment sooner and he would have been gone in a blaze of gas and steel he observed as the rocket hit its target and blew the vehicle to pieces.

The helicopter that had been hovering above landed in a nearby parking lot and dropped off two men in business suits, then took off. Grant watched as they walked over to the wreckage to find a body and armed themselves when they didn't find him. This hadn't been the first time that somebody tried to kill him, or a Wilson for that matter. He checked to make sure that he didn't leave anything on the bike by looking into the backpack on his back, and pulled out his armor. Whoever these guys were, they were about to face the wrath of the ravager.

As he readied his guns, the two men that had gotten out of the helicopter were walking his way. Suddenly they stopped and pointed their rifles at the bush.

"Come out peacefully Wilson and we won't have to kill you."

Grant stood up from the spot where he was squatting and held his hands up in the air. "All right, you've got my attention."

"We were originally given orders to kill you, but just a few seconds ago we were told to tell you this. You are stop your trip to Detroit."

Grant tilted his head to the side and asked,"And why would I do that?"

One of the men reached behind his back and pulled out cellphone. He tossed over to Grant to who immediately answered it.

"And who might I say is calling?"

There was a pause on the other side of the line,"My name is shadow man, and I have a great interest in the man that you're after."

"Really?" Grant said in a sarcastic tone,"I have two interests in him. One involves the money that Luthor is offering, and the other is a personal interest with the man that could've killed Deathstroke."

"Let me make an offer, one that you can't refuse. I will pay you twice what Lutor was planning on giving you, and then some."

Grant thought about it for a moment and looked at both of his attackers. After assessing both of them, he quickly drew his handguns and shot them both between the eyes.

"Look shadow man, I don't give a fuck about what you have to offer. What I'm interested in more than money is finding this prick, and if you want to offer money, fine. Just remember this, you get in my way, and your people will end up all the same, dead."

He then threw the cell phone to the ground and fired a few rounds at it to make his point clear that Grant Wilson was a man on a mission. Screw everybody else's best laid plans.

* * *

(**Back with Marcas**)

Miranda had finished packing her stuff about an hour ago and was checking us out while I was still in the room getting myself ready for the next trip. My things were packed and ready to go as well, all that I was waiting for was a call back from Temarius about when he was done with his parents.

It was funny to me thinking about how open Temarius was about his job with his parents. He didn't even think about the dangers that a simple secret leaked could do, or if he ever decided to date anybody. Still, I could respect him for not holding something like that back from his loved ones, just think of the ramifications if he did and they found out. When I heard from him last, he had everything packed before he came over and was talking to his parents about watching over his dog while he was gone, a young and energetic Labrador retriever that he named Sheldon. Now that I think about it, when this is all over, I want to get a dog.

The time on my watch read 9:34, it had been twenty minutes ever since Miranda went downstairs to check out, I wondered what was taking so long. I checked my cell phone to see if she had called or texted me, and found nothing. By now I was worried that something had happened to her and I should run downstairs to help her, but before I could even get my shirt on somebody knocked at the door.

I went to see who it was and saw Miranda standing there with a weird expression on her face. It was a mix of a smile and a look of panic that confused me, that was until I opened the door to see the reason why she had the look on her face like she did. Standing next to her, just a few inches taller than me was somebody that I never would have expected to be here...

"SLADE!"

_**TO BE CONTINUED...**_


	6. The Ravager and the Skewer

"SLADE!"

The man in front of me threw Miranda at me and laughed,"Hardly, i'm nowhere near the level of incompetence of that son of a bitch, though I am a Wilson."

I tried not break eye contact as I pushed Miranda into the bathroom and backed up towards my bags.

"I can't believe you're the guy that had the chance to take out the old fart and didn't even finish the job, way to go fuckface."

As soon as I reached my weapons case I pulled out my sickle and pointed it towards him,"I didn't fail anything by letting him live, I just gave him a chance to suffer eternal darkness before he burns in hell."

The man in front of me pulled out the broadsword that he had on his back and held it in front of him as he came closer to me.

"That's very funny to say, you still should have killed him while you had the chance."

As he said that he swung his weapon at me. I caught it with my sickle and pushed him back towards the open door and into the hall. He pulled a few knives from a pouch on his side and threw them at me. I was able to deflect a few, but one managed to graze my cheek and bury itself in the wall behind me. Before he could throw anything else I threw myself at him and went right through the wall of the room behind him.

Shifting our combined weight he tossed me into the bathroom while he fell on one of the beds. While he was down, I went looking for my sickle and found it back in the hallway. Meanwhile Ravager was lining up a shot on my spine with his handgun.

"I hope you don't mind hospitals, because you're about to visit one kid."

As he was about to pull the trigger a bullet whizzed over my shoulder and went into Ravager's hand. I turned to see who fired the shot and saw Miranda standing there.

"Is he dead?" she said as her body continued shaking.

I looked at Ravager and replied,"Nope, but I do think that you managed to piss him off."

Ravager, now more pissed off than before, got back up on his own two feet and picked up his broadsword off of the bed.

"Well, I was going to simply paralyze you so that I could take you back to Luthor without all the fuss, now i'm going to have to enjoy killing you and your girlfriend." he said as he reached for something.

Reaching down into a pouch at his side, the Ravager pulled out a few smoke grenades and pulled the pins. One by one, the grenades quickly made it impossible to see anything in the hall, even with all of the open windows and light coming in. At first I tried to locate this attacker with concentrated hearing but all that I could hear were the sounds of the air ducts and other things going on around me. Nothing was visible to me, so instead of fighting him on his own terms, I decided to grab Miranda and get out of there. In order to do that I would have to go off of memory of where our room was and find her.

There was a problem that was nagging me in my head. This Deathstroke knockoff hadn't even tried to attack me through the smoke yet, and I was starting to wonder why when I heard Miranda scream. My powers immediately came on and I rushed blindly through the smoke to the source of the scream and stopped when I felt a rush of air against my skin. I could tell that a window had been opened, but from what I can recall, we don't have those kinds of windows in this hotel. In our room the smoke was clearing, and by the window I could make out the image of the Deathstroke imposter holding Miranda out the window.

The whole time I was standing there he stared straight at me, not turning away to deal with the woman struggling in his grip.

"You see, this is why you never bring a non-combatant in a fight boy, because civilian casualties do tend to happen." he said as he shook Miranda.

"MARCAS DO SOMETHING!" yelled Miranda

I looked over at the dresser where Miranda had been standing earlier and saw my pistol lying there. There was an opportunity to take him down, but at the cost of a friend. He saw that too and loosened his grip on Miranda.

"I can see it in your eyes, those fucked up looking eyes of yours. You want to save the girl and get away scott free, but you know that that isn't going to happen. You know that if you take one shot, one shot at me and she goes splat like a watermelon all over the pavement. Another factor to add is that I don't give a shit about her life or yours, Luthor just wants the package that you stole from him and maybe have your head delivered on a fine silver platter as a side dish, so make your mind up hero. Are you going to give up and make this easier on yourself, or is this going to have to get REAL messy."

To me, I had already made up my mind. I calculated the risk of what I was about to do next and realized that there was a way to save Miranda, but it was going to hurt like a bitch. Within a few seconds time I picked up a piece of glass that was right next to my feet and threw it right at the knock-off's face like a ninja, then I picked up my desert eagle and holstered it in my right pocket. While the fake was falling out the window with Miranda, I jumped out to grab her and pulled her close to me to make sure that I was acting like a shield for what was to happen next.

Using the momentum that I had, that and the closeness of the office building across the street, I fired a few shots into the window across the way and landed inside on my back. Of course I skidded across three or four feet of glass, but at least Miranda was safe. I couldn't say that same for the Deathstroke wannabe, though when I got up to see where he landed, I couldn't find him. Hopefully he got plowed over by a tractor trailer, or something like that.

"You all right?" I asked Miranda as she was catching her breath.

She nodded,"I'm perfectly fine Marcas, but how are you feeling? I mean your back looks like you went flying through a glass factory."

I reached behind me and pulled out one of the larger pieces that she was talking about and felt the healing process slowly take place.

"I'll be fine. I can regenerate a little bit faster now thanks to me mastering my powers."

Miranda watched as I took each piece of glass out, only to have the wounds seal by themselves.

"Well, it looks like you won't be needing a doctor any time soon."

"Actually we do need somebody that is trained to use medicine and other things of the sort, because I am not invincible, and neither will anybody else on our team. Plus my regenerative abilities only affect my muscular infrastructure, organs, bone structure and skin, it doesn't cover anything like toxins, radiation, or disease."

"So you're not super Marcas."

I almost busted out laughing on the floor if it hadn't have been for my wounds still sealing."That's true, i'm still human."

"And by the looks of it you got yourself in trouble." said a familiar voice.

We both looked at the window that we crashed through earlier and saw Temarius standing there in full costume.

"So, this is the guy that you were talking about." she said as he helped her up.

"Da, and the best part is that he joined us."

"Yeah, and you should've called me back there."

I shrugged my shoulders,"I thought that I could handle the guy, besides he was nowhere near the people that I faced in Gotham."

As I looked over at where our room was I thought about what he said earlier. One of the containers that I emptied and brought with me belonged to Luthor, and what was inside must have been important for him to want to kill me over it.

"Temarius," I said as I pointed to the busted window across the street,"can you fly us back up there, I need to sort a few things out."

"Well you might want to sort them out and fast, I think I hear my best friends heading our way."

Sirens could be heard in the distance, a familiar sound from Gotham that I picked up and fast. What he obviously meant was that Detroit PD had a vendetta against the man that was doing their job for them, and they were rushing to take him down.

* * *

(**Earlier with the Shadow Man**)

"Look shadow man, I don't give a fuck about what you have to offer. What I'm interested in more than money is finding this prick, and if you want to offer money, fine. Just remember this, you get in my way, and you're people will end up all the same, dead."

A gunshot was heard and then a tone came on the earpiece that the shadow man was wearing. By the look on his face that computer analysts could see, he was about to blow from all the pent up frustration that he had been holding back.

"It intrigues me...it intrigues me when you offer a man his life to be spared, and given a raise in the very same moment and what he does is spit in your face."

He looked around at the people around him and smiled,"Have you ever felt that before?"

People looked at one other and nodded in agreement, only to spare their lives, but the shadow man read this.

"That's what I thought, you're all liars you know that...GUARDS," he yelled at the top of his lungs,"TAKE EVERY ONE OF THESE LYING, CONNIVING, FIENDS OUT OF MY SIGHT AND GET ME SOME HONEST PEOPLE THAT I CAN TRUST IN HERE!"

The guards that came in did what he said and dragged most out of their seats kicking and screaming down the hall to be re-educated into tools of war for the Shadow Man's bidding.

While sitting there, alone in the command center with nothing to do he mentally summoned Phase into the room, his walking relief pill and agent in the field. Using his super hearing, he could hear the familiar clacking of her favorite high heels and leaned back in his seat, closing his eyes.

When she walked into the room he could smell the perfume she was wearing from across the way and grinned,"Isn't that the blend that I gave you when we went to Berlin."

She pursed her lips as she kissed him on the forehead,"You guessed right, like always."

"I know, I just feel terrible right now."

Rachel looked at all of the empty seats and hung her head in disbelief,"This is the third time this month that we've had to replace the people here in the command center because you don't trust them. Baby what's wrong?"

"Nothing my dear, I just needed the comfort of your company." he said as he rubbed his eyelids.

"No, there is something wrong, and with us being together we need to share these things. Tell me, what is going on in that head of yours?"

Martin thought for a moment as Rachel decided to to take a seat in his lap. He looked at all of the unmanned consoles and seats and thought some more.

"I'm thinking about the lowliness of man. How one group of people, the ones that worked these desks would lie to me to save their lives, yet you have people like Grant Wilson who will throw away theirs for some stupid purpose...man cannot rule themselves because they do not make sense."

"And that's why we're here." she said as she started unbuttoning his shirt. "We're here to end the senseless wars, the genocides that man commits against one another, the corruption that eats through the souls of the innocent, that's what we're here for. We make sense where the Justice League and all their cronies don't."

Before she could start on his pants he grabbed her hand and gently put it where his heart was,"We make sense so that man no longer has to debate what is good and what is evil, because we will decide that for them. In the end we are the judges because we know what's best, after all, we've been in existence since the times of Christ."

They both smiled at each other, holding the other in their embrace. The Shadow Man waved his hand in front of him and the guards stationed inside left, closing the doors on their way out.

* * *

(**At a McDonalds outside of Detroit**)

Believe it or not we stopped at McDonalds leaving the city, not to eat their gourmet dishes, but rather research into a new member that Miranda had found for us by searching through hundreds of blogs. Of course Temarius had to put his civilian clothes back on in order to walk in public because of the publicity that the hero of the motor city had. Funny enough Miranda found him on a blog about himself, mostly made by fangirls of course. It's funny how the girls on there would gladly say that they wanted to have babies with him in explicit detail yet they had never even met him.

Also the container that the phony was trying to grab for luthor only had a vial of some kind in there. Temarius would have analyzed it, but he didn't have the equipment or the facility to do it with, so we just left it as is and brought it with us for the long ride. But Back to the possible new member. She lived in Dakota City, or from what we heard around the outskirts of the city where people had seen trails of ice and slush that had mysteriously formed in the middle of the fall. These same trails were spotted all around Dakota and when the hero of the city, Static commented about it in a news conference where he simply said that he would get to the bottom of it. Now I don't know too much about judging somebody by their facial expressions, but by the look that static had all throughout the video he must have known about her.

"She looks like a prime candidate." said Miranda

I looked at some of the photos that she printed and tossed them in the garbage,"How can we tell what she even looks like when all of these photos are shit."

Temarius looked over a few more pages from the Dakota Sentinel and sat back in his wheelchair,"She has a regard for the sanctity of life, just like static does and she's a hero."

"Ok that's a start, but how can we tell that this isn't a transvestite?" I said as I pointed to another blurry picture.

Temarius and Miranda facepalmed while I pointed at the picture again,"Seriously! From what I can see on these pictures, whoever took them, I can clearly see a lump down there if you know what I mean."

Miranda snatched the photo from me and looked over it "Marcas, that's just a blur."

Reaching across the table I grabbed it back and pointed at the same place again,"What if it isn't? What if this she that everybody is talking about is actually a he that dresses like a she!"

"And why is it important what the person looks like?" asked Temarius from the side.

"Well, when I ask whoever it is to watch my back, I don't want them to literally watch my back and then my ass!"

The other two looked at me funny as I crossed my arms,"What? I want my ass to be safe and not penetrated!"

Temarius looked over to Miranda who was had her hand over her mouth, trying to hold back something, while the Temarius was on the verge of laughing himself.

"What? I'm being serious you two! If this person is what I think he, she, whatever the hell they are is, I might need to get an ass chastity belt because the uniform yells homo."

Miranda couldn't hold it in any more and started laughing out loud enough for everybody to hear her and started pissing me off while Temarius was already in tears.

"You two are something else, really something else."

"And so are you." said a voice from behind.

I turned to see where the voice came from and saw a girl standing there wearing a blue miniskirt and a white tank top with purple sports sneakers and long messy light brown hair smiling down at me.

"Do I know you?" I asked.

She shrugged,"Maybe not you, but somebody else that knows you."

Hearing her say that made me reach into my coat pocket and put a hand on one of my desert eagles. I hoped that Luthor really didn't send a little girl to kill me...

"And who else knows me?"

She looked around and shrugged her shoulders,"Well he isn't here right now, but he gave me this nice little note right here to give to you."

Using my free hand I snatched the note from her grasp and opened it. On the piece of paper was handwriting that I recognized, and on it was written,'_She's your problem now._' I recognized the handwriting by memory and crushed the piece of paper in my hand.

"Well, what does it say?" asked Temarius.

I looked at him and Miranda and threw it in the middle of the table,"It's from shadow, and by the looks of this message he didn't want her in the group and for a good reason."

Suddenly the girl behind me raised her voice,"Welllllllll, he told me that I didn't have the heart of a warrior, and I told him differently! I even gave him an artists rendition of his whole team, and he just told me to find you."

"And how did you find me?"

Without warning she reached into my jacket and pulled out one of the desert eagles for all to see,"With this gun right here. Shadow told me that he put tracers in both your handguns, but I don't know why he would do that...unless he was going to throw you a surprise party and couldn't find you! That's it! He wants me to find you so that you can go to a surprise party!"

Listening to this girl talk was starting to drive my patience, and soon my anger would get the best of me.

Meltdown in 5...

4...

3...

2...

1...

Miranda saw my eyes turn to crosshairs and pulled Temarius under the table with her.

"What's going on?"

"I think that Marcas is about to go ballistic on her ass, and trust me when I say that you should stay under here."

"LISTEN TO ME YOU FUCKING IDIOT! FIRST THINGS FIRST, SHADOW SENT YOU HERE BECAUSE HE DIDN'T WANT YOU TO JOIN THE WARRIORS AND INSTEAD LEFT YOU WITH ME TO BABYSIT YOU! SECOND, HE PROBABLY PUT TRACERS IN MY HANDGUNS TO KEEP TABS ON MY LOCATION, NOT SO YOU COULD TRACK ME DOWN TO BRING ME TO SOME BIG, STUPID, MADE UP PARTY! AND THIRD..."

Before I could reach the third part tears started streaming down her face and she took a few steps back."Those are the same eyes that my sister had when she killed daddy."

I was confused with what she was spouting on about. Was she talking about her father? Did she mean that her sister had the power of the Red Crosshairs? I didn't know for sure, but every time I tried to approach her, she would back away from me. I guess that this could be expected after I just grilled her ass for being herself. Something told me that yelling at her wouldn't solve the problem so I decided to calm down.

"Look," I said as I took a seat in a booth nearby,"why don't we start over with our conversation."

She looked down at the desert eagle that she still had in her hand and sat down across from me. I pulled a napkin out of the nearby dispenser and handed her one to wipe the makeup that was streaming down her face.

"Here is your gun back."

I took the weapon and put it back in it's respective holster and propped my head up with my elbows on the table.

"So, what is your name?" I asked in the calmest way possible.

"Jessica, Jessica Stephanie."

"You have two first names?"

That question earned me a smile,"Yeah, I think it adds character, kinda like Ricky Bobby."

By this time both Miranda and Temarius came out of their hiding spot under the table to meet this new person. Temarius held out his hand while Miranda stood behind him.

"Hello there, my name's Temarius, Temarius Green."

Jessica shook his hand then took the napkin that I gave her and started drawing. It was Miranda's turn to get to know the girl and she was quickly doodling something on the napkin and I couldn't tell what by the crudely drawn picture. Within a minute or so though, she handed the picture to Miranda and grinned.

"Who is this?" Miranda asked as she looked at the childlike masterpiece in her hand.

Jessica clapped her hands together and pointed at Miranda,"It's you silly, you don't have any boobs."

Me and Temarius looked at Miranda and saw something dark deveoping on her face and got ready to grab Jessica.

"Yes I do,"she said through gritted teeth,"they're just not as big as everybody else's."

Jessica, seeming to push it more to the limit stared at Miranda's chest and poked at it where her lady lumps would be.

"Nope, there's nothing there." she said as she poked there a few more times.

Quickly I grabbed Miranda by the waist and held her back before she started swinging and foaming at the mouth from the anger pouring out of her at the moment.

"LET ME GO MARCAS!" She yelled as I held her back,"ALL I WANT TO DO IS RIP HER PRETTY LITTLE TITS OFF AND SHOW HER WHO'S GOT THE BIGGER PAIR AROUND HERE!"

To make the situation better than it was Temarius added,"That's what she said."

* * *

(**Back with the Shadow Man**)

The whole command center reeked of sweat and sex and by a few hand prints that were visible on a monitor every now and then, it was obvious that they had gone for a few rounds around the entirety of the room. Afterwards they had retreated to the private suite behind the largest monitor in the back, where they had their last rousing round of their mating ritual. Inside, Rachel was sleeping on the over-luxurious leopard sheet bed bare-ass naked for the Shadow Man's pleasure while he walked around in his own birthday suit contemplating about the whole fiasco in Detroit.

This whole time he thought that his son was going to go straight for him, and if the Shadow Warriors defeated Adrian and Cyrus then they wouldn't be too far behind. He would round them up, kill them, and give his son nothing to live for but his dear old dad. The whole plan seemed right to him, even if it wasn't flawless, but with the past two days it had become evident that his son was taking his precious time reaching him and he didn't know why, that was until his agent Rift had come back. Chase gave him a detailed report describing his son's heroics, and the near death of Grant Wilson at the hands of a soccer mom's minivan. It all seemed harmless until he found out why his son was going to the Motor City, not to investigate him, but rather to recruit somebody for a team that he was building to take on his order.

This complicated things, but with the Shadow Man there was always a contingency plan brewing in his mind. While he was smacking dat ass on his spinning chair in the middle of the room he thought about the bounty on the warriors and concocted an evil plan that would shorten his son's time of arrival to a few weeks instead of almost a year. He decided that he would put a price on the head of every person that his son was collecting for his small army and force him to take him on, team or not, and if the plan didn't work then he would have time to build his forces until then. It was brilliant, sloppy but brilliant.

In the mean time he would build his own list of professionals to bring in, most likely as a counterweight to Red's Army.

* * *

(**The Outskirts of Metropolis at Luthor Manor...**)

Grant had painfully made his way back to Luthor in one piece, only to get slapped by the billionaire.

"YOU IMBECILE! I hired you to hunt down one man, ONE MAN, and you manage to let him go free? Better yet I offered you millions in return for the box and like the person before you, you fail!"

The ravager sat there with an ice pack on his face and spat out a drop of blood on the million dollar Persian carpet.

"What can I say, he's skilled."

"I know that he is you buffoon, but I thought that you would be better!"

Grant shrugged his shoulders and grunted from the pain,"I know, I know, let me just ask, what could have been so fucking important that I had to risk getting killed to take back?"

The billionaire in front of him pulled a picture out of his coat pocket and handed it to the mercenary. He looked over the picture for a bit then handed it back.

"It's a werewolf, whoop de fucking do."

Luthor cringed at the ravager's use of words and pointed at the picture,"Beleive it or not, that is the leader of the shadow warriors when I worked with a man named Damien Cole."

"And what does this have to do with the box?" he asked impatiently.

"When I injected the boy with the needle it somehow got a small sample of his blood which contains an odd chemical for the human body. I took it to a lab of mine to run some tests and found out that he has been using a special chemical to give him powers, similar to that of the venom formula that bane uses except it gives you more than strength."

Being the curious one Grant asked the question,"What were you going to use it for?"

Grabbing the nearby newspaper he showed a picture of Superman on the front page and tore it in half.

"Every single attempt that I have thus far made to kill that idiot in a cape i've always failed miserably, and since then have been keeping a low profile. The day when I discovered the formula that shadow had from his blood sample I saw an opportunity, an opportunity to destroy him and all of the Justice League so that I can assume the position that is rightfully mine in this world, ruler."

The mercenary sitting by him laughed,"You're too predictable Luthor, too predictable. That's probably why you can't beat him."

The criminal mastermind scowled down at the man next to him,"And what would you know about best laid plans? You failed to kill the Teen Titans, a group of little children with superpowers, and you failed to kill your father at his weakest. Don't you talk to me about being predictable, becuase both things that I mentioned are evidence of your predictability."

Grant waved it off and stood up to face his client,"Look, I know that you want this box as soon as possible, but I don't have enough resources to track him down. So unless you want the box to get away, then i'm going to need more funding."

Luthor walked across the room towards the fireplace and thought of a few options that he had. This situation could be beneficial to him if he pumped more money into the search, then again he had something else, rather somebody else that could help stop this thing before word of the box leaked out to the league.

"Mister Wilson, didn't you say that you needed more help." Luthor said as he grinned.

Grant folded his arms and nodded,"Yeah that's what I just asked for."

"Look behind you..."

When the merc turned to see what was behind him a throwing knife flew past an him and into the wall right by him without him even flinching. He knew the throwing style that was used to throw that knife and the only person that he knew behind it, his stepsister, Rose Wilson.

"Rose.."

"Grant..."

"Whore..."

"Cocksucker..."

"Children."

Both looked at Luthor, who was sheepishly grinning by the fireplace and continued their staredown.

"Luthor, why the hell did you bring this rookie to help me out when all I needed was more funding?" he asked in a know it all tone.

"Because he knows that you'll just let your obsession with beating father consume you instead of doing your damn job like you should be doing. I'm basically going to be playing babysitter to you, and help your sorry ass get the box back."

'_Great_,' he thought to himself as he stood there,'_this complicates things_.'

* * *

(Back with Marcas and the gang)

I locked Miranda in her van to make sure that she wouldn't enact her revenge, and believe it or not she was still fuming over the whole thing. If it had been me in that situation I probably would have handled it differently, and by differently I mean not getting us banned from a restaurant for eternity. Yes we were banned from McDonalds, oh well, I've had worse happen. We weren't going to eat there anyways, so what was the point.

Jessica handled the situation differently. She just laughed the whole thing off and asked me and Temarius if it was Miranda's time of the month yet. We both shrugged our shoulders and dared not to ask, I mean who wants to ask a woman if she's spilling period all over the place down there? Because I definitely don't want to.

I asked Jessica if she wanted to join us and she gave me a simple yes, which means that our team now has three people ready to go out into the field. This made me proud seeing more people joining my group, and now we were going to Dakota, the home of Static Shock and maybe if we are lucky, our newest recruit. Hopefully the next one wouldn't be as airheaded.

* * *

**Next Chapter Red and the crew visit DC's version of the Windy City, Dakota! I wonder who this next person is that can manipulate water In a really COOL way? Find out next chapter!**

**Also here are Jessica and Temarius' profiles:**

**Name: Temarius Green**

**Alias: The monster/hero of motor city, Gargoyle**

**Age: 26**

**Sex: Male**

**Height:5'9**

**Weight: 195 IBS, 220 with gear on.**

**Eye Color: Brown**

**Hair Color:Black**

**Nationality/Ethnicity: African-American**

**Psyche Profile: Critical Thinker, Tinkerer, Creative**

**Powers/Abilities: Electric powered armor, Bullet proof plating, Shock blasting claws, other nonlethal equipment.**

**Weakness(es): Mortality**

**Wardrobe: (Described last Chapter)**

**Vehicle: Thruster pack**

**Past: (Posted last chapter)**

* * *

**NAME(HERO NAME): Skewer **

**ALIAS(CIVILIAN NAME): Jessica Stephanie **

**AGE: 19**

**SEX: Female**

**HEIGHT: 5,5 **

**WEIGHT: 150**

**EYE COLOR: Green**

**NATIONALITY(U.S., China, etc.): American, English **

**PLANET and SPECIES(If they are an alien): Human**

**PSYCHOLOGICAL PROFILE(Personality): Skills and the mind of a warrior but the heart of a child. Always ready for a fight and defends her friends, but for the most times acts like an air head. Thinks being a hero is like the ones in fairy tales and is in for a rude awakening. She doesn't kill unless necessary, but prefers beating down criminals. Freezes when she witnesses her first horror. (Example, witnesses a slave trade, a man burning someone alive for fun or treating woman like pets) grows stronger and more determined when traveling with Red.**

**POWERS/ABILITIES: Hand to Hand combat, swordsmanship and is flexible and is a free runner. Perfect for scaling buildings and crawling through small spaces. Knows pressure points to perform silent nonlethal sneak attacks.**

**WEAKNESS(ES): Is not strong enough to engage strong opponents as Bane and Croc and lacks the true gear to deal with super criminals and mostly relies on her sword in drastic situations. Is willing to try new gadgets and gear.**

**WARDROBE(CIVILIAN/HERO): As Skewer she wears black leather boots and tight black pants a purple shirt underneath a black leather jacket. She wears a cute domino mask (Dark Knight Rises Catwoman). Uses a dragoon sabre. Has long messy light brown hair. Civilian ware she wears a blue miniskirt and a white tank top with purple sports sneakers.**

**VEHICLES(IF YOU HAVE ONE): Motorcycle.**

**Also, Rachel is my OC.**

**PLZ Review, and if you want to(you don't have to) submit an OC VIA PRIVATE MESSAGE.**

**_UNTIL NEXT TIME!_**


	7. Below Zero

**Stonecold, your character has arrived.**

**A/N: Also check out the Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney Trilogy app for the iPad, it is addictive.**

**Disclaimer: I don't own anything DC Comics**

* * *

The drive there was uneventful, lucky for us. The best part was the fact that Jessica brought her own transportation with her so that she wouldn't have to ride with Miranda, who seemed to be letting go of the whole incident. Occasionally though, Jessica would do something crazy like a wheelie while she was driving in front of us, or even drive backwards which I thought was impossible on those things. Temarius was using his thruster pack to keep up with us in the air and to keep watch in case Luthor had something waiting for us up ahead, which seemed to be nothing at all.

This put me on edge. Knowing the mastermind that Luthor is, he had to have something else other than that Deathstroke wannabe in his arsenal of financially motivated thugs. Of course that guy back in Detroit did mention about making something personal. That made me think about who he really was under that mask. Was he related to Slade, and in what way? It seemed impossible to me because I only knew the Slade that the Titans and the League knew, which was an over-obsessed, manipulative, asshole.

Then again, he might have been a different man before everyone knew him as Deathstroke. Maybe he settled down or tried to and tapped it without wrapping it first. Both options sounded like a reasonable explanation, and could work if I had more information to work with, and I don't. For right now i'm just going to assume that the man from Detroit was looney toon with weapons and armor.

In the distance I could make out the appearence of a skyscraper, indicating that we were almost to Dakota. This city looks like Gotham from a distance, just without all of the gothic architecture and blimps, which I didn't understand. Some buildings stood out from the rest while the others blended in with the city and faded into it's skyline. As I slowed down to match Miranda's speed I called her using the car's built in communications suite.

Thinking things over before we left we had never talked about where we would be staying, so I deferred to the one that booked our last hotel."So, where are we going to stay tonight?"

Miranda looked at me through my window and signaled me to get behind her. "I booked us to stay for a night or two at the Marriot downtown; from there we look for our next member."

"And the closest Ihop!" yelled Jessica in her naturally cheery tone.

I watched as she zipped on past us and forced me and Miranda to speed up. "Is there an Ihop in Dakota?" asked Temarius.

Miranda shook her head and scowled,"I don't know for sure, but as long as it shuts her mouth, then i'm fine with it."

* * *

(**In the City ahead...**)

A lone figure stood on the spire of the tallest building around him and surveyed the area. His crosshaired gaze watching the ordinary citizens pass on by without even slowing down. Society sped up on it's daily routine while he stood above them all picking out each individual that had certain characteristics that he was looking for.

He looked from face to face looking for a girl that fit the physical description of his target. She had red hair, blue eyes, stood 5'8, and weighed 137 pounds exactly like her last doctors visit stated in her medical records. The hardest part would be tracking her down, even with the exact specifications. The easiest part would be killing her, he just had to figure out how he would do it.

Listed on the profile page that was sent to him she had gotten the ability to manipulate water particles and freeze them in an instant, thusly explaining the ice bridges that people had been seeing around the city. As of late she's been using those powers to help out the local police force and super hero deal with the lesser criminal element and even the bang babies, ordinary people that gained powers after a chemical explosion. She was one of them, and how he could tell was from the record of purchases made by her parents which indicated that she was here during that event.

He only had a limited time to find her, and a much shorter time to report his findings to the Shadow man before someone else took his place. Instead of scanning any more of the area he thought that it was about time that he used his power on a scale of this size, since he hadn't done so in a while. While standing there he crouched and recited something in Latin.

"Veni veni omnia, umbrae cadunt." he said then repeated his phrase a few more times.

On the spire below him, shadows crawled down the side of the building and jumped into the shadows of people and cars below. From those shadows they multiplied into many more and entered other people's shadows like a disease spreading from one host to the others around the source of the outbreak. Within a few minutes half the city was being followed by one of these shadow hopping creatures, and after ten there wasn't a singe crevasse or corner that wasn't covered by one of these creatures. All of their eyes became one with the man meditating on the spire, who now was able to do what his own two eyes would take forever to do.

Even with all of the eyes though, he couldn't seem to find his target. His agents of darkness had the city covered, yet it seemed as if she wasn't there, and after searching through every last feed his suspicions were confirmed. It became apparent that most of the time that she leaves her hideout, wherever it was, was after the sun went down. Maybe he would have to wait until after night came to try again, and so he would. That means that he would have to recall his shadows, all of them, to make sure that he wouldn't leave a trace of his prescence in the city. In a single snap, all of the shadows leaped from their hiding places and returned to their source on top of the tower, and with a single wave of the hand he disappeared into the shadows.

* * *

(**Later that night...**)

After we sorted things out and moved ourselves into our rooms, we found an Ihop and finally got Jessica to calm down. The whole time that we had been checking in she was bouncing around and thinking out loud about which pancakes she was going to get, and drove Miranda up the wall. The best part was that I got her as a roommate, and Miranda decided to stay with Temarius, the lucky woman.

While we were sitting in the Ihop eating, I made a call to somebody that I knew here that could help track down this possible recruit. Five minutes later he walked in, in full costume.

"Marcas, I didn't know that you left Gotham." shouted Vergil from across the way.

I stood up to greet him and shook his hand. "Da, I left a few days ago to do something on my own."

I guided him over to the table that we were all sitting at and caught Temarius' attention. His eyes were as wide as saucers when he saw static and extended his hand out to him over the food.

"Temarius Green."

Vergil shook his hand as he sat down,"Static."

Temarius looked at me and punched me in the shoulder, "You didn't tell me that you knew Static Shock!"

I shrugged my shoulders,"I know a lot of people that you don't know I know."

Vergil sent a shock my way and made me jump,"He's bluffing, he just knows me through Shadow."

"Oh well, I guess it had to come out sooner or later." I said as I sat back in my seat.

"I guess it did, so, why did you call me over here?" asked Vergil.

"Yeah Marcas, explain why you called a hero away from his duty." chided Miranda.

I reached into one of my coat pockets and pulled out a picture that we had printed off along the way from one of the local newspapers and showed it to static.

"We're looking to recruit whoever this person is that's laying out all the ice around Dakota." I said

Vergil looked at the picture more closely and handed it back to me,"I'm guessing that you need my help to find her."

I nodded,"By the way that you talked about this person, it sounded like you knew them."

"I do, and she's very hard to find sometimes."

"What do you mean?" asked Miranda

"What I mean is that she likes to hide after she's done fighting the bad guys. Sometimes I can find her, other times she moves to a new spot." Vergil responded

"So where is she now?" asked Temarius.

Vergil looked at me and said,"I'll tell you where she is, I just want Marcas to explain why he left the warriors."

"It's nothing terrible." I said.

"If it's not bad then say why."

I sighed,"Do you remember when the attacks across the world happened a few days ago?"

Vergil nodded,"Yeah, I even had a situation over here in Dakota. What happened in Gotham? Because I heard that that place got hit the worst."

"It did, and I found out in the end that everything that was happening across the world, including what happened in Gotham was all my father's fault."

Vergil ran his hand through his hair and whistled,"Wow, and I thought I knew some bad people here."

I scoffed,"And that's why I left Gotham, that's why i'm trying to form a team, so that we could pursue this man and bring him to justice."

Vergil looked around the table as all of us were sitting there and eating, and Jessica had just finished her last pancake. It was calm until she took a swig of her drink and let out a loud...

**BURRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR RRRRRRP**!

**A/N:**(Imagine that scene from Elf)

Everybody in the restaurant, if they weren't before, were now staring at us like we were aliens, or monsters or something else horrendous, All because Jessica couldn't hold it in. Somewhere in the kitchen we could hear glass shatter and someone cursing about something In Spanish.

Seeing that the staredown was going nowhere, everyone at the table just put down what they were eating and started walking out, while I stayed behind and paid the bill.

Outside everybody was waiting for me, including vergil who was hovering on his static saucer.

"I don't where you find these people Marcas." said Vergil from above.

As soon as I got into my car I said,"They flock to me."

"Who does?" asked Jessica.

"Never mind." I said before I shut my door and shifted the car into drive.

* * *

(**Unbeknowngst to our heroes below...**)

The man from earlier watched the small convoy of vehicles and two flyers as they made their way out of town. Before they got out of sight, he repeated the latin phrase like he did before, this time only sending one minion after the group.

* * *

(**The outskirts of Dakota...**)

Vergil led us to a cave outside of the city where an abandoned mineshaft stood. The reason why we came out here was nearby where we found noticeable trails of frost on the ground, which could only mean that our person was around here. Feeling the area around the entrance of the mineshaft, you could notice a substantial temperature difference between the area around our vehicles and the shaft itself which had a temperature so cold that it reminded me of home.

"She's in there." Vergil said as he pointed at the mineshaft.

"I had a feeling that she was in there." said Temarius.

"How do we get in? The entrance is blocked by a cave in." Jessica added.

"Stand clear!" I yelled as I shouldered my RPG behind them.

Before I could pull the trigger, a shadow slipped into the cracks of the rocks and disappeared. I looked at everyone else and saw that they were about as dumbfounded as I was.

"Uhhh, what was that." said Jessica with a worried look on her face.

I pulled the trigger on my rocket launcher and unholstered both my desert eagles,"That is death slowly approaching our friend in the cave."

* * *

(**Underground**)

Madison was still fast asleep in the cocoon of ice that she made to protect herself from outward forces during her beauty sleep. This was the only night in the past few weeks that she had been able to lay her head down without a single care in the world, and the best part was the dream that she was having. In her dream she was the queen of her own kingdom. It was a land where every need that she had was taken care of by her overly muscular manservants, that never seemed to sleep. It was her happy place where she could escape everything that was going on around her, of course she would have to wake up eventually, but not until her alarm went off in the morning. So until the sun came up and started a new day she would be enjoying the nice massage that Georgio from that men's underwear commercial was giving her right now.

Not to her knowledge though, the shadow that had crept through the entrance of the cave reached the ice cold chrysalis that she had formed and quickly teleported his master there. Finally seeing his target in sight he formed a hammer out of the shadows in the room and started smashing on the icy container in front of him. With each solid hit the rush of the kill was becoming more and more irresistible, soon his bloodlust would be sated by this girls death and his master's will be done. His only problem was when me and my army came in.

**BLAM!**

A shot flew right through this assassin's arm, and sent the trained killer howling in pain to the ground. Somehow he had been caught off guard by our group that was entering the cave and didn't even hear us coming. In anger he sent out multiple shadows to attack us, and one by one they came off the ground and materialized into 3d shapes.

One of the shadow minions formed a sword in his hand and charged at me. Another spawned four arms and went for Jessica, who already had her silver sabre unsheathed and in hand. Temarius and Vergil took the last two for a flight to painsville when they grabbed the last two's legs and flew out of the cave.

My shadow was putting up a fight with the weapon that he had and forced me to use my own weapons, my sickle and hammer. It brought down the huge blade with all it's strength and I quickly rolled to the side. The impact sent a shockwave through the cave and threw me back against the wall. Then without hesitation it threw it's sword where my head was and forced me to dodge again, this time though the blade changed it's course. It's master was directing it's flight path and I couldn't do a thing to stop it, so I put my weapons in front of me and hoped for the best. When the sword eventually hit me, I was thrown at the wall again and my weapons had caught the weapon in midflight. It was a close call considering that the tip was only half an inch from my face, and the sword was still moving.

I looked over to see how Jessica was doing and saw her chopping the limbs off of the monster in front of her to no avail. It's severed limbs kept growing back each time she chopped one off. I wondered if we could switch places, because I could easily take on her foe. With quick thinking I threw the sword into the wall next to me and ran over to where Jessica was facing her shadow. While she had it distracted, I jumped into the air, hammer over my head, and brought it down on the beast from the dark. It took a second for it to register what had happened before it stumbled a bit and fell over.

Jessica walked on top of the of the giant that I had defeated and planted her sword in it's back,"Stick a fork in him, I think he's done!"

The last monster formed his sword into a hammer and contniued what his master didn't finish. I decided to end this before things became more complicated and aimed my desert eagles at the wounded assassin in the corner.

"Listen here you thing from hell! I know that you have your objective and that's fine, but know this, by the time that you crack open that cocoon of ice, your master will be dead."

The monster paused to think for a moment then, disappeared from sight. With quick thinking the attacker enveloped himself in shadows and formed a protective cocoon for himself.

Finally realizing that the noises weren't coming from her alarm clock, Madison woke up and disassembled the icy barrier that she had made for herself to face me and the other members of my army that had just gotten back.

I was the first to break the ice(no pun intended) and extended my hand. "Hi, my name is Marcas, and you ar..."

Before I could finish my statement, I had been frozen solid by the girl that we just saved. It looks like it was the wrong time to wake her up because we now looked like the bad guys to her, instead of the man that had disappeared behind her.

Her eyes shifted around the room at the three people that were left standing, not trusting any one of them, except for Static who was now trying to unfreeze me using the heat from channeled electricity.

"Oh my gosh, was he your friend Vergil?" she said as she put her hand over her mouth.

"Not a friend Madison, just an associate." He said as he finished unfreezing the left side of my face.

As he managed to free my left arm, I held it out again, this time hoping that I wouldn't be turned into a redsicle. Out of the kindness of her heart she accepted it and released me from my icy prison.

"I hope that's a nice trade for being frozen." She said as she smiled.

"I think I enjoy not being a human Popsicle." I said with a laugh

She looked back in the corner where the man had been and looked at all of us,"Who was that?"

Temarius walked over to where the man had been and found a few droplets of blood on the icy ground. Reaching around his belt that he had, he opened a pouch and pulled out an eyedropper and a small plastic tube. "We don't know who he is for now, but we will after I get this processed."

"I don't think that it will be necessary." I said as I crouched down next to him.

"Why not? I'm thinking that it was one of Luthor's flunkies like the one that he threw at you in Detroit."

I took the blood sample from his hand and analyzed it for moment and watched as the blood turned black and disappeared. Temarius watched the whole thing and scratched his head.

"I don't think that blood is supposed to do that." Vergil said as I handed the vial back to Temarius.

"It's not supposed to, not human blood anyways."said Temarius as he analyzed the empty tube.

"So what are we dealing with?"asked Madison.

I clenched my fists as one possibility came to mind,"My father."

* * *

(**In the subway system...**)

A shadowy figure was using tweezers to pull something out of his arm while he sat there against the wall. Ignacio hadn't been there for more than a few minutes after Marcas shot a nice sized hole in his arm, and was thanking him mentally for his new scar.

'_Damn it, damn it all! If I had been faster I wouldn't even be in this situation right now!_' he thought as he pulled the bullet out.

Just then a familiar sensation filled his mind, a sensation that he had felt many times before.

"Master.."he said as he gripped his head.

The all too familiar voice of the General Westbrook echoed through his mind,_'Unit 4412, why have you retreated?_'

"It was too hostile, and I was outmatched!" he yelled at the air.

'_That's not good enough 4412. You have enough training to take on any of the top members of the Justice league alone, don't tell me that you couldn't take on the Red Crosshairs and his friends, because that is bullshit!_'

The assassin bowed his head and started crying,"Please forgive me master..."

Suddenly the assassin's head sagged to the side, blood flowing from his ears.

On the other side of the conversation sat a well decorated man, who sat alone in a completly blacked out room, his head in his hands.

"You did the right thing." said a feminine voice across from him.

He looked up at her and wrinkled his face,"And what the hell do you know about me doing the right thing? You're my lieutenant, not my damned psychiatrist."

"I know..." she said as she walked up closer to him.

"but sacrifices have to be made in order for progress to occur."

Westbrook looked up at her and shook his head,"I know that I can be ruthless sometimes, but why kill off a good soldier for failing to do one simple thing instead of reassigning him then sending someone else in?"

"That's because we have to send a message through our ranks." said the familiar voice of the Shadow Man.

Westbrook stood up out his seat and gave a salute. "Sir!"

"At ease." he said as he motioned for westbrook to sit back down.

The Shadow man pulled up a seat across from the former US Spec Ops Colonel and pulled a dagger out from his coat.

"I don't know if you knew it James, but there has been some disagreement among the branches of the order." he said while twirling the small blade in his hand.

"I didn't sir, please elaborate."

The Shadow Man looked behind him and held his hand out to the woman behind him who was seen in the light as Elizabeth Bereavement, his second in command.

"Miss Bereavement here has been examining the ranks lately, and from what she has told me is that she executed an assassin unit for trading vital information over to the sisterhood."

Westbrook knew what his boss said by that and wiped his face with his hands.

"I'm sorry sir,"he said in a dire tone,"I know that you don't tolerate loopholes..."

The Shadow Man held his hand up and replied,"I'm not here to punish you Westbrook, i'm just here to tell you that killing off this assasin was a good thing. After all, he was a member of that unit."

The general paused for a moment to collect his thoughts then stood up, and saluted again,"What would you have me do sir?"

"I would have you use the mind scanning module that you have installed in your brain and use it to scan your men for suspicious thoughts."

"Your will be done." Westbrook said as he bowed and walked out.

The Shadow Man turned to Elizabeth with lust in his eyes and said,"Now that we're alone would you mind giving your master the pleasure of your company?"

Elizabeth thought differently than her master, she bowed, then walked out without another word. The Shadow man sat there and chuckled.

"Oh well, I guess that i'm going to have to settle for Rachel again tonight."

* * *

(**Back in Dakota**)

We were able to coerce Madison to come back with us to the hotel that we were staying at and found out that there was limited room, so we rerouted over to Vergil's place instead.

"So this Shadow Man sent that thing that attacked you to originally attack me?" Madison asked.

"Da, and I can think of one good reason." I said as I took a sip of my coffee.

When Vergil walked back into the room he asked,"Why? Why go after Madison? She hasn't done anything to harm whoever this shadow guy is."

"True, but she wasn't even the one that made Madison a target." I said as I set my now empty mug down.

Jessica scratched her head and thought about it,"Then who did?"

"We did."

Everybody's heads but my own turned to face the winged paraplegic sitting at the other end of the table as the young genius explained.

"I'm sorry Miranda, but I had to go through your computer while you were going to the bathroom to run a diagnostic scan on your computer."

Miranda almost spit out her coffee as she thought about what he said,"You did what?"

"I scanned through your computer for anything serious, and let me say that the order of the red crosshairs is embedded like a family of ticks in your computer."

As he was going on, Miranda had pulled out her computer and opened it up.

"I was only in the bathroom for almost five minutes, what did you find in that amount of time?"

Pressing a few buttons on his watch, he quickly provided evidence enough. Projected in front of everyone was a screen full of code, all of which no one in the room understood.

"All of this code wasn't part of any programming that Miranda installed, or was already there. Instead this code came from a fast changing group of networks that are based all over the world. Basically, you've had a dangerous case of spyware this whole time and you're run-of-the-mill security suite didn't pick it up."

Miranda looked at her computer and checked all her files just to make sure that everything was there.

"So we've been monitored this whole time?" asked Jessica

"It seems so" I said while leaning back.

"Now what do we do?" asked Miranda.

Temarius pressed a button on his watch and turned Miranda's computer off. "I'm going to have to add my own, privately made security suite onto your computer, and before that debug the whole thing."

"How are you going to recruit?" asked Madison

I smiled as I held my finger up high,"Simple, we go by word of mouth."

"You mean like phone calls?" asked Jessica.

I nodded and grinned,"Just like the good old days."

"pffft, who needs the good old days when you have cell phones." said Jessica as she pulled out her cell phone.

With precise aim, Vergil aimed his finger like a gun at the device and shot a bolt of electricity at it.

"HEY! What's the big idea static cling?"

Temarius confiscated the device, then walked back over to his seat. "The big idea is that the people that are going after Marcas are using our gadgets against us, and until I can get our devices secured, they can tap our phones and track our searches to their hearts content."

"Also keep in mind they can track our movements VIA satellite." I said.

"So what do we do until that happens?" asked Madison.

I folded my hands together and said,"Why don't we talk about you working with us, with Red's Army."

* * *

(**At an unknown location...**)

General Westbrook was considering his options with the failure of their first assassination attempt on Marcas' future comrades. Now with knowledge that people within the legion of the red crosshairs have been giving vital intel to the sisterhood, and the recent mental sweep of the nearest units, it was almost impossible to tell what was going to happen if the legion was used again. An option that he was considering was to let Luthor and his cronies take out Marcas' future options, but that would involve the mastermind that is Lex Luthor and knowing the bald brainiac he would question us and ask who we are. Another option was finding out who was next on the recruitment list and continue like last time, even though it's hard to tell who he is going to choose. The choices, the possibilities, it was hard coming up with something, especially when the possibility of death came into the equation.

He needed something to clear his mind, and he only knew of a few things that would do the job. So he walked over to the cabinet in the wall beside him and pulled out a box of cigars. Cubans were his new favorites, because they were banned in the US during his time in the service, that and the special ingredient cleared his mind so that he could think for a moment. As he pulled one out, he eyed the beauty for a moment before it was sliced in half by a silver blade that passed in front of him.

"What the hell lieutenant You could've sliced my hand off!"

Elizabeth grinned,"But I didn't, did I?"

Westbrook mumbled something about personal space, then pulled out another cigar.

"You know that if you wanted to clear your mind, all that you had to do was ask me." she said as she took the cigar and the box out his hands and laid them down on his desk.

"And what could you do to clear my mind?"

She grinned seductively as he asked the question,"Why General, haven't you ever wished to punish one of your subordinates over such a nice, smooth, pure mahogany desk like this one?" she said as she spread out on the desk.

Westbrook shook his head,"I've punished plenty of people by sending them to the re-education center to make them more obedient before, but the kind that you're talking about...nope, not one bit."

Elizabeth frowned,"Why not? You're not in the army anymore, so you don't have to follow by those stupid regulations and rules anymore."

He scoffed,"I'm 37, you're 25 years old. Is that enough for you?"

Slowly Elizabeth crawled across the desk, as if she was a predator on the prowl,"So what? I've done it with men ten years older than you."

"And you killed them."

She shrugged her shoulders,"So?"

Westbrook leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes,"Never mind, just let me try to think things out on my own. I don't need the thought of some kid trying to get her jollies with me."

He waited silently for a few moments for her to shut the door behind her as she left before he picked up the cigar and lit it up.

'_Thanks to her little distraction, I think I now have an idea._'

* * *

(**Back in Dakota...**)

Everybody was sitting in the living room chatting it up while me and Madison talked on the roof. While we sat up there, she opened up to me about the whole bang baby incident, and how she ran from home because of what her parents would think about her powers. Her conversation compared to Jessica's was a little more in depth into her life.

Of course when I opened up about my past she lit up, big time. It seems that I always find the Justice League fans everywhere I go, and no matter what happens that's what they know the most about, other than my past of course. After that conversation though, I felt like I reeled her into the group. She sympathized with me, and my and cause and at the moment she was fast asleep on shoulder. Looking at her sleeping face reminded me of something, something that made me question if I was ever going back to the warriors or not. Through her face I saw the faces of the few that were already with me, and just thinking about the possibilities...

How would they cope with everything if I disbanded our family if we defeat the shadow man? Would it be better to have two pains in the ass for the Justice League than one? I wondered about these questions, and it hadn't been the first time that they had come up, but as for right now I would leave them unanswered. Now I would let her rest and think about it in the morning.

* * *

**A new possible member already? Is this story moving too fast? What the hell happened to the wilson twins? How now brown cow? I don't know, but comment below and maybe some of these questions can be answered...maybe.**

**Also, I am still accepting OCs, so if you have one send it my way.**

**But here are some restrictions:**

**1. No more regular fighter types! I already have enough badasses without superpowers. But there is an exception.**

**(The one exception thats actually two if you think about it) - Cyborgs or robots(Cuz i'm a nerd)**

**2. MOAR ALYUNS! (I already have one alien, but diversity of space people is always good.)(But no fuzzy aliens)**

**3. People from other countries(Too many 'mericans)**

**4. Dudes(Yes there are two, count em two girls that I have right now, but Looking at the current roster...it's going to be a sausage fest in Red's ****army.)**

**Here is Madison's profile**

**Name: Subzero**

**Alias: Madison Norton **

**Sex: Female**

**Nationality: American**

**Age: 19 **

**Hair color: Red**

**Eye Color: Blue**

**Height: 5'8**

**Weight: 137 lbs**

**Outfit: (hero) she wears a blue bikers outfit(think an all blue version of what Harley Quinn wears on Batman: Arkham City) with a blue bandanna over her hair, with a pair,of sunglasses. (Civillian) a pink tank top, blue skinny Jeans, and brown sandels.**

**Powers: Subzero can form ice out of the water in the air, she can use it to either freeze her oponents or form the ice into some kind of weapon**

**Weaknesses: Heat, if it's to hot for her than she can't form ice.**

**Personality: She's very playful, she likes to taunt her enemies, she's also intelligent, and kind.**

**Elizabeth Bereavement is Shadowknight's character.**

**And that is all!**

**UNTIL NEXT TIME!**


	8. Is this Chapter 8?

**Just to let everybody know, I am not going to be able to update as frequently as I used to. I'm probably going to try to get another chapter in by this Sunday, by I can't say for sure. Next week I will be starting my online summer class, and this one is going to be important, so my update schedule is going to revolve around when I have the spare time.**

**Don't be discouraged though. This story is still going strong!**

**Disclaimer: I don't own anything DC Comics**

* * *

That next morning I woke up to Jessica jumping up and down on my bed yelling something at the top of her lungs. When she saw that I was awake she started jumping closer to me.

"Wake up Marcas, it's a brand new day!" She yelled as she got in my face.

'_Next time we stay in a hotel, Miranda gets to sleep in the same room as Jessica._' I thought as I got out of bed.

One detail that I didn't notice when we moved into the room was that there was no coffee maker, which made my progress slower than it already was. I'm hoping that there was a continental breakfast waiting for me downstairs, or else this day isn't going to happen for me.

I opened up one of my luggage carriers and pulled out some clothes to go out and about while Jessica sat there and stared at the back of my head. I could feel her eyes on me and turned around to have her face in such close proximity to mine.

"Good Morning?" I said as I backed up against the dresser behind me.

I could tell that she was looking at my eyes and she actually tried to poke one, that was before I swatted her hand away.

"I'm just wondering where you got those eyes from." She said as she sat back down on her bed.

I thought about what she was talking about, then turned on my crosshairs."You mean these eyes?"

She nodded as she retreated to a corner in the room,"Yeah, how did you get them?"

I thought about it for a moment and remembered what the man said at the gas station and repeated his words,"I was born with them."

Jessica scratched her head for a moment then asked,"How? My sister didn't even have those when she was born."

I thought about it for a moment and remembered that Jessica didn't even talk about her past. "The only way that your sister could have gotten them if not by birth, then she most likely got them from the Shadow Man himself."

For the first time that I've known Jessica, she had a serious look on her face. "And we're going after the very same guy?" She said gripping the pillow next to her.

"Da."

"Good, because I think that my sister might be still working with them." she said with a hint of seriousness in her voice.

I put a hand on her shoulder and looked her in the eye as I said,"What has she done to you to use that tone?"

"Not much really, we've just hated each other's guts." she said very blatantly.

"Why? Why would siblings HATE each other, because hate is a pretty strong word to be throwing around about one's family."

She looked at the window and stared at the clouds flying above the urban sprawl and sighed. "It's a rivalry that was forced on us by our father. He trained us to fight and fight and fight, and to never back down. We were treated like soldiers and the more he pressed his will on us, the more separated we became...it all came together one day when me and Elizabeth were dueling, and I lost. Back then I didn't like to lose, so when she took off her protective gear I slashed at her face and gave her a permanent scar."

"And how did she come in contact with the order?"

Jessica laid back on her bed and looked up at the ceiling as she continued,"It was after the accident that she somehow met up with this Shadow Man guy, and I don't know how. A few days later she came back and killed our father, then tried to get me to join her, which obviously didn't work out."

It was impressive that she had such a horrible life before she joined us, yet she always has something to smile about. It was almost as if she had some type of split personality disorder. Just a few minutes earlier she was bouncing around like a child, and now she's as cold and collected as an ice cube. I ask myself again, how do I find these people?

Jessica walked over to her dresser and pulled out a change of clothes, and a book then headed to the bathroom. Before I went out into the hallway, I knocked on the bathroom door and and said,"I'll meet you downstairs." I didn't get a response so I headed down to see if Miranda and Temarius were already there.

* * *

(**Luthor Manor**)

Lex Luthor had just gotten up from his blissful slumber. A dream about him kicking superman in the super balls, and ultimately defeating the man of steel. It's too bad that the dream was out of his reach, even if he had billions of dollars to blow into the wind, he was trying to remain on the down low. So for now he was just your average billionaire overseeing a powerful multi-national company, as if that was anywhere near average.

Coming downstairs he smelled the smell of a finely made breakfast, a meal made to help him start his day. It was the smell of a fine cuisine of sorts that only so many people could afford from one of the finest chefs in the world, Volfgang Bruck. As he entered the dining room though he noticed the rift in time and space on the other side of the room that had closed, and a man sitting in his chair, eating his breakfast, with his silverware.

"What is the meaning of this!" he yelled from across the room.

The figure on the other side chuckled,"Your cook made a mighty fine florentine omelet he did." said Rift in a satisfied tone.

Luthor reached for the wall behind him to open a secret compartment when he felt a hand grab him. Looking over his shoulder he saw Elizabeth standing there, her sword halfway out of it's hilt.

"I see that you've met my associate, she has a vice of a grip doesn't she?" Rift said in a cocky tone.

"What do you want from me?" asked Luthor.

The villain across the table pulled a toothpick out of his pocket and picked at his teeth as talked.

"Your cooperation mister Luthor. You see, we have mutual goals."

"And who is we? You and the girl?" questioned the billionaire.

"My master, the Shadow Man. He's after Marcas and you're after a box that he has, so I think that we have something that we can both agree on."

"You want me to work with you, a man that I don't even know and ate my breakfast, to help track down the fool that stole MY possesions? I think that you don't know who you are dealing with here."

Elizabeth unsheathed her sword and pressed the tip of her blade against the back of one of his legs, forcing him to get on his knees. Chase stood up and tossed the toothpick behind him as he walked over to the evil genius kneeling in the doorway.

"I do know who i'm dealing with. A man that doesn't know where his precious box is, so you sent the spawns of Deathstroke to investigate the hotel, where they have found absolutely nothing."

Luthor glared at the man in front of him and yelled,"What makes you think that they haven't find anything?"

Chase snapped his fingers together and a squad of unknown soldiers in high tech armor walked out of the kitchen with both Rose and Grant Wilson, unarmored and cuffed.

"My men caught them before they could make their way back to Detroit. Now let me ask you again Luthor, will you work with us?"

This time Lex knew that he was beaten. His only plan to hunt down his future schemes had failed, and he only had one choice, he had to agree.

Luthor looked over at the Wilsons and sighed,"Fine, I'll work with you."

"Good."

"But there is something that your shadow man must first do."

Chase grinned as he stared into Lex's eyes and asked,"And what would that be?"

"I want to meet your boss face to face, and I mean in person, not some television screen or cell phone."

Rift opened a portal behind him and grinned,"That can be arranged."

* * *

(**Back at Vergil's house**)

After I got my day started with a pot of coffee, and something to fill me up, we all went back to Vergil's house where Madison had spent the night. Upon entering we found out that she wasn't even in the house, and Vergil was nowhere to be seen either. Who we did find was a blond-haired man with glasses and a weird looking, high-tech backpack sitting at the kitchen table.

"Who are you?" he asked first.

"Who am I? The question is who are you?" I asked as I reached in my coat to pull out a gun.

"I'm Richard, but everyone knows me as Richie."

"What are you doing here?" asked Miranda.

Richard looked on his computer screen and tapped an icon,"I'm watching over the house while Static is out tracking down Madison."

"Why is he having to do that?" I asked.

"Because she ran away again."

* * *

(**T****he Outskirts of town**)

Static was trying to keep up with Madison at the pace that she was going and didn't seem to be catching up at all. The trees on the outskirts of town were thick with leaves and made it hard to see anything at all, including Madison who didn't seem to slow down to look behind her.

He didn't even know why she went running off like this in the first place. All that happened this morning was a talk about who tried to kill her back in her hideout last night. Deep down Vergil knew that it had to be something to do with that, and that he was probably the only one that could talk her out of running again.

"Madison!" He yelled at the top of his lungs,"Stop what you're doing and talk to me!"

Madison looked behind her for a moment then changed direction all of a sudden. Vergil was caught off guard and flew into a tree branch, which helped slow things down a bit. Once again, Madison didn't even stop to help Vergil get up, and that's when it finally hit him, he wasn't going to chase her down the easy way, so he had to bring her down the hard way.

Forming his hand in the shape of a gun, he aimed right at Madison's feet. He was hoping that he could hit the moisture under her feet before it formed into ice and cause her leg muscles to tense up. Concentrating enough energy for a shockwave into his finger, Vergil fired off a bolt of electricity that connected right in the knick of time with it's target. A few seconds later he saw Madison fall straight through the trees, and right at his feet.

"Madison, you've got some 'splainin to do."

The heroine hung her head in shame and took in a breath,"What do you want Vergil."

Vergil leaned against the tree next to him as he asked,"Why did you run?"

Madison decided to keep to herself and let Static continue. "Marcas was offering you a home! He offered you family, food, maybe even clothing for a costume that looked like it wasn't stolen from Harley Quinn! What do you do? You run from him...and why?"

Once again she didn't even say a word...this got to Vergil. "What's the point? You won't even tell me what's wrong because of this stupid fear that you have of people with open arms and kind hearts. You've had this ever since the incident."

Madison looked up at him and shook her head,"I don't fear those kinds of people..."

"So she speaks." Vergil interrupted.

"I just don't, I-I-I..."

"You don't what?" Vergil harshly asked.

"I don't want any of them to get hurt, ok. I saw the thing that tried to kill me back in the minsehaft, and i'm afraid that it might happen again."

"So you're running from them because you think that you'll get them killed?"

Madison nodded,"I don't anybody to die because of me." she said as tears started to form in her eyes.

"To tell you the truth Madison, you don't need to worry about you being with these guys." said a familiar voice from behind.

Vergil didn't even have to turn around to know that it was Richie standing behind him.

"How did you find us?" asked Madison.

Richie reached into his pocket and pulled out a crudely made walkie talkie."I just tracked Static's radio signals to the outskirts of town and found you two here."

"And I came along." I said from the bushes.

Madison looked around the other two to see me and the rest of Red's army standing in front of her. Vergil gave her a hand and helped her up on her feet while Jessica wrapped her in a hug. Nobody really knew why she did that, but then the crazy one explained.

"You think that you would die with all of us around?" Jessica asked.

Madison looked around at all of us,"With Static and gear maybe you guys would..."

"What!" yelled Temarius from the back of the group.

"Well, I..."

"You still don't think that we'll live with you around?." I added while frowning.

"Yes."

I pushed my way through everybody and stood right in front of her, almost to the point of invading her personal space. With the lightest touch I tipped her chin up to where she was facing me and looked her in the eyes.

"I swear on my life that we will live. With the training and the numbers that come ahead to join us, I don't think that we'll be dying any time soon."

Just then an explosion sounded off in the distance. We all watched in the distance as tall towers of black smoke started rising from the city. Richard pulled out his smartphone and started sifting through various streetcam feeds unti he found the one that he wanted.

"Hey um, guys..." he said as he pointed at the screen.

All of us watched as a gigantic four legged mech was tearing through downtown Dakota along with what looked like a platoon of smaller robots walking with it. Seeing the display of destruction, Static hopped on his static saucer and hovered above the trees to get a better view. From there he watched through a pair of binoculars as a pair of heavily armed individuals ran across the rooftop of an apartment complex, both bearing a similar costume design.

"Well Madison, I guess that we'll get to test Marcas' promise out." he said as he came back down.

"Who do we know that has a small army?" asked Richie as he flipped through the street cams.

Static thought about it for a moment then shrugged his shoulders, "I don't know but there's a lot of em, whoever they are."

"So what do we do?" asked Madison.

"Elementary dear Madison!" yelled Jessica with a raised fist,"We kick their shiny metal asses! Red's Army style!"

I took out my hammer and sickle and grinned,"Let's go make some scrap!"

* * *

(**On a rooftop**)

Rose was watching the destruction below unfold using the zoom feature on her binoculars, and by the smile on her face she was enjoying it. Grant on the other hand wasn't impressed, in the matter of the fact he thought that the whole plan was ridiculous. It called for too much attention for one thing, and the second thing was what if all things the Justice League shows up? What would they do then?

"Grant, just sit down and wait. They'll come to us in a short amount of time." she said as she focused on a mech.

"The question is who will come for us, the Red Crosshairs, or the League?"

Rose turned and looked at her brother, "The league won't respond to this you dumbass."

"Really? How can you be so sure?" he asked with clenched fists.

She turned back to focus on the gore below and said with confidence, "That Rift guy said that his associates released Solomon Grundy and a few other heavy hitters around Metropolis, so super buttwipe and his butt buddies should be preoccupied with that."

Grant scoffed,"I don't know how you can trust that guy, especially after how his boss beat Luthor with mind games and how a bunch of soldiers took us down without a lot of effort."

"You don't understand me do you dipshit? I don't trust that bastard as far as I can throw the tea-chugging son of a bitch, or his boss."

"Me either."

A chill suddenly went through Grant and Roses spines as they both remembered the conversation between Luthor and the Shadow man...

* * *

_Flashback to two hours ago..._

The man that Rift had been talking about came through the portal, the only thing was that he was wearing a blank black mask, in other words his face wasn't visible. Before the Shadow man could speak Luthor had the first words.

"What the hell is this, a joke! I asked that I could SEE the man, and all that i'm seeing is a body without a face!" he spat.

The Shadow Man waved his hand and without a word Elizabeth and Rift bowed and left the room. Luthor watched as they exited and smiled,"I see, so you must be a telepath. This should be interesting."

"Luthor," the Shadow Man said in a garbled, yet commanding voice,"you need not to know of my identity."

"Let me guess, it's because you know that I could hunt you down and kill you if I saw it."

The Shadow Man waved his finger,"Not at all. You see, a mere mortal like you would be blinded by the very image of my face."

"Why? If you're ugly, there is such of a thing as plastic surgery." he said with a chuckle.

"SILENCE!" yelled the man on the other side of the table. "You cannot see my face, because you would be looking at the form of a god."

Luthor raised a brow and laughed,"A god? You claim to be a god? Sir, you do not know what it is like to be a god until you have met Brainiac; now that's a god."

Across the way, the Shadow Man extended his arm in front of him and made a clutching motion with his hand. Within a few seconds, both Rose and Grant could see their client starting to choke and grab at his throat.

"What...the...hell is this!" he said in between gasps.

"This my dear idiot is the power of a god." he said as he balled his hand in a fist and quickly cutoff Luthor's airway.

Immediately Lex Luthor stopped all movement and fell out of his chair. While he was lying on the ground dead as a doorknob, the Shadow Man stood up from his seat and walked over to where Luthor's body lay and held his hand over it.

"Rise my servant, RISE!"

As soon as the words escaped the speakers on the mask, Luthor stood on his own two feet and took in a breath of fresh air.

"What...did you do... to me?" he said between gasps.

The Shadow Man grinned as he removed his mask, "I killed you and brought you back to life Luthor, for I am the master of life and death."

Luthor scoffed,"That was a nice magic trick that you did there, but i'm not impressed."

It was then that the Shadow Man grabbed Luthor's left hand and pressed his thumb into it. Lex didn't know what the man in front of him was trying to accomplish until he felt a burning sensation in his hand. It felt like red hot fire was searing the skin off of his hand, yet he did't see anything to attest to that. When the Shadow Man let go, he saw exactly what was the source.

Somehow the Shadow Man had imprinted the form of an upside down pentagram on his hand with his thumb. How he did it, he didn't know, why he did it is an entirely different question.

"You see Luthor, when I save someone's life, bringing them back to life for instance, they have to accept my mark, it's insurance. That mark on your hand symbolizes that you are now my property, you now accept my orders without a second thought."

Lex didn't want to realize what the man was saying because he thought that it simply wasn't true, but the supposed lie became a truth when his arm started moving on it's own.

"Try to explain that you fool." said the Shadow man

Luthor couldn't move anything at all, even though he wanted to. He knew that the prescence in the back of his head meant something, and it obiously was based on the mark that he had been given. In his own mind he could feel the prescence closing in, the only thing was that the mind of this man was made like a fortress, meaning it was hard to take over. Luthor's sheer will was the only thing holding back the Shadow Man and he knew it.

"Try all you want Luthor, but know this, everything that is yours is now mine."

All that the billionaire heard was a sinister laugh, then everything went blank.

...

* * *

(**Back in Dakota**)

Both Wilsons's had moved to another rooftop after hearing that Marcas was entering the city. They couldn't help but hear the reports of only five people with him. Grant looked into the scope of the sniper rifle in front of him and stared down at the fight going on below, and was actually impressed by fight that both Red's Army and static shock were putting up.

"Sis, I think that we should enter in the fight and soon, or else those contraptions won't last much longer."

"No dumbass, we have another job to do, follow me."

* * *

(**Down in the Streets**)

It was a warzone, rather something that you would see only in the movies. In a way the ongoing battle reminded me a bit of Gotham, except there weren't any traces of Slade, or the Shadow Warriors. In the center of town, Me and Jessica, who now called herself Skewer, were holding city hall off from the rampaging bots storming up the steps. Across the city at Dakota regional hospital, Static and Madison, who now wanted to be referred to as Subzero, were holding off some of the more heavily armed robots that seemed to be pouring out of the sewers like a plague. About 25 blocks from them, Richie and Temarius were facing off with the mech that was terrorizing local law enforcement. Everybody had their priorities, and hopefully we would fulfill them all, hopefully.

Back with me and Skewer. It seemed that we couldn't catch a break, and I couldn't reload, it was all going to hell. To my right she was chopping the metal fiends like a sushi chef, precise-like and efficient. She even lived up to her new name when she ran her blade through a few and used their dead weight like a bat. If she had known that she was going to do something like this, she could have called herself shish-kabob.

I swung my hammer to my left and hit something, threw my sickle to my right and sent it through a few more units with an audible screech. The enemy was getting closer, and hopefully all of the staff had evacuated out of the hall, because it looked like it was about to be the time to fall back.

After taking a hit to the face and my abs, I gave the signal to Skewer and we both fell back to the city hall. From a distance, we could see that the previous owners had barricaded the windows and the doors, which left us pretty much stranded in front of the hall, unless...A thought came to me. I had confiscated one of Batman's grappling hooks through a run in while I was with the warriors and copied down the design of it. Before I left I crafted a miniturized version that could work with my desert eagles, the only thing is that I hadn't tested it yet.

"No time like the present, eh?" I said as I fumbled to get the hook out.

Jessic held off a few robots as I finally got the hook in and aimed it at the roof.

"Hey, if that thing doesn't work, it was nice knowing you." yelled Skewer as she skewered a few unlucky robots.

I hoped that it would work, and pulled the trigger. That moment my heart skipped a beat, as I watched the hook fly through the air, higher and higher towards it's goal, hopefully it would reach it's target. Within a few seconds it latched onto something on the roof and tightened the line. Now was my chance, I hooked up the power winch that I carried with me and wrapped a cord around my waist, then hooked up the whole contraption to the line that was dangling from the roof of the city hall.

Putting on my sunglasses I looked back at Skewer and yelled,"Come with me if you want to live."

She didn't waste a single second of a chance to escape the nightmare that we had gotten ourselves into and ran towards me. Out of nowhere though came a few bots that had caught up with us, and were quickly catching up with Jessica. Going off of memory, I pulled the Kalishnakov that Leonid gave out and loaded the drum magazine that I had for it.

"Jump on my back and hold on!" I yelled as I opened fire on the robots running behind her.

Skewer jumped on and held on tight as I released the cord that was holding us there on the ground. As soon as I let go, we both went flying up towards the roof where the grappling hook had landed, leaving our many enemies in the dust. When we reached the roof, I threw the line off the ledge and emptied the rest of the drum magazine that I had left on the robots below.

"This all doesn't make sense." I yelled over the sounds of battle all around us. "Where in the hell did all of these things come from?"

Skewer shrugged,"I don't know, but there's a lot of 'em."

I looked over the edge of the roof to see what was going on and saw that robots below were looking up at me. One of them that had a different color scheme out of all the rest gathered the tin men around it and looked like it was giving orders to them.

"How do you think Static and Sub are holding up?" asked Jessica from somewhere behind me.

"I don't know, but I think that it would be good to check in."

* * *

(**Dakota Memorial Hospital**)

A solid beam of ice froze ten bots in their place before they could breach the fortified lobby of Dakota Memorial Hospital, and it wasn't a second too late. The hospital was still being evacuated when the robots reached the area, and patients were still being airlifted out.

The fiends of steel relentlessly charged the bottom floor, only to to be stopped by Static or Subzero. While Madison froze the robots in their place, Vergil took the energy that they had while they were down and dished it back out on the hoardes of enemies that were charging the building. While Zero was quick freezing another pack of robots, her earpiece started going off.

She pressed a button on her earpiece and heard the sound of Marcas' voice,"This is Marcas, Zero, Static, do you read?"

"This is Subzero, over."

"Madison, how's everything on your side of town?"

Before she could answer back she turned to her right and froze a few bots that were trying to catch her off guard then responded. "We've got a lot of bots to fight and a lot of people to get out of here."

"Do you need help." Marcas asked.

She looked over at static to see if the situation was getting worse and saw him sapping the energy out the units charging the building, then chucking the empty shells at the oncoming bots. "I think that we can handle things here, plus it looks like there is only the top floor left to go in the hospital."

Just then, the ground started shaking below her feet. The building across from the hospital started rocking from front to back, looking like it was going to fall at any second.

"Hold that thought." she said as she fired a solid beam of ice in front of the building. Her beam was forming a wall in front of it in order to hold it up, which it looked like it needed to.

'_That should keep it in place_' she thought as she turned to face the hospital.

Suddenly the ground started shaking again, this time bringing the building across from the hospital to it's breaking point. The top of the building came apart first and sent chunks of concrete and ventilation down on the street below. Zero fired blast after blast of ice at the concrete blocks, quickly freezing them, then shattering the gigantic ice cubes below. She seemed to be making progress when out of the crippling building across from her came a sound that she had never heard before. The building had finally decided to cave in, but what remained of it made her stop what she was doing.

Standing in the rubble before her was the shape of a woman, or what she assumed was a woman. The dust from the building clouded her vision and almost blinded her, that was until somebody put something in her hand. She looked to see who it was and saw Static standing there with a gas mask on. Zero put on the gas mask that she had and tightened the strap around her head.

"Is it working?" asked Vergil.

Zero tried breathing in it and gave a thumbs up, "Good, the hospital is cleared out."

"What about the person in the building across from us?" asked Madison.

Static looked over at the building that she was talking about and couldn't see a single thing. He walked over to the rubble to see if he could find the person that Madison was talking about, of course the possibility of somebody surviving something like that would be near impossible. Lighting up the area with a ball of static electricity, he didn't find anything but jagged pieces of building and furniture lying around. The dust from the collapsed building wasn't helping either but he continued to look around for any signs of life. When he reached what he thought was the middle, he stepped on something that made a crunching noise, looking down he saw a picture frame that looked like it had seen better days.

"Madison," He shouted while pressing a finger to his earpiece,"I haven't found a single trace of life anywhere around here. You must have been seeing things."

"No, i'm positive that I saw somebody standing in the rubble! If you need any help..."

"No, I don't see anybody or anything here but building. I'm coming back over to you."

Pausing for a second, he took another look around the rubble to see if there was anything that he might have missed, and as he expected, there was nothing there. Walking back towards the street he noticed something sticking out of the rubble. At first it looked like it was a mannequin's arm, then looking closer it was the arm of person that he actually saw.

"Hold on whoever you are, i'm gonna get you out of there!" he yelled as grabbed the nearest piece of rubble and started pulling it off. He tried lifting the piece of steel more than a few feet off the ground, but couldn't lift it anymore than a few inches. Without warning something latched onto his ankle, he looked down to see what it was and saw the hand that was sticking out was grabbing him. Seeing this, a new found strength came to him and helped him lift the chunk of steel where it was and move it a few feet away. Underneath the chunk he couldn't see what the arm was connected to, but he did see a glowing pair of white eyes. The rubble beneath him shifted and another arm came out and grabbed his other leg. He tried to escape, but as it was shown, you can't escape the deathgrip that is Ladytron.

Static didn't know what to do and zapped her. It didn't work out so well, and actually seemed to make her mad. Finally freeing herself from the fallen building Static saw the form of what used to be a human being, now ninety percent machine. The android pulled it's arm back, and with a powerful thrust sent it forward into Static's Mask, shattering the eye piece and throwing the hero himself into Madison. She didn't even see it coming and got clobbered when she was hit. The impact was powerful enough to send both her and Static flying through the front doors of the hospital that had been barricaded to the ceiling.

The dust from the fallen building at that moment had started to clear up, and as the sun became visible, so did Zero's attacker. The mechanized fiend looked at her with it's soulless eyes, the eyes of a monster. As it walked across the road it pulled a weapon off it's back and attched the weapon to it's arm, the weapon giving a loud humming noise as she did so.

Subzero knew that she had to get Static out of there because he couldn't defend himself in his current state, the only problem was that she couldn't reach him. When she and Static flew through the front door, it knocked all sorts of debris in every direction, including a part of the ceiling that was being held up by one of the barricades. Madison knew that she couldn't move her legs and feared for her life. Never had she been in a situation like this before, and it was all starting to get to her mentally.

'_Madison._' said a voice in her head.

Madison looked around the room and didn't a soul.

'_Madison, call for help or you will die._' said the same voice again.

The girl did as she was told and pressed the open channel button on her headset.

"Attention everybody! I need help over here right now! Static is out cold and I can't move! Red! Skewer! Anybody! I need help right now or we're both going to die!"

**To be continued...**

* * *

**Ok, if you don't know who Ladytron is, look her up. She's a DC character that was bought along with many others when DC comics purchased wildstorm comics. Anyways, she's a total badass, and is not a pushover. I also don't own her, so...meh.**


	9. The Warzone

**Sorry for the wait people, but as I explained last chapter I have a summer course that I'm taking for college. Sorry for the wait, but here is chapter nine!**

* * *

(**At City Hall**)

The robots had climbed their way up the sides of the building to get us. This time they strategized on their approach, which caught me and Skewer off guard. The one thing that I noticed when they attacked us, was they were pouring more of their fight into Jessica rather than me. It didn't make any sense at all being that fact that I was the leader, so why didn't they give me any heavy blows?

I would try to find out the reason behind the robots motives, but I don't think that these things can talk, at least in a language that we can understand. I looked over at Jessica to see that her uniform was in tatters, and the mask that she had on was hanging by a thread. She had a lot of the fight taken out of her, and by her demeanor, it looked like she would collapse at any second, then the radio came on.

"_Attention everybody! I need help over here right now! Static is out cold and I can't move! Red! Skewer! Anybody! I need help right now or we're both going to die!_"

A light bulb came on in my head. Yesterday with the assassin targeting Madison, today with the robots targeting my comrades, it all made sense. I ran over to Skewer and grabbed her arm.

"Come on!" I yelled as I guided her to the edge of the roof.

"What are you doing?" she asked as she fell on the roof.

As I picked her up I pressed my hand on the radio and said,"Madison, we'll be over there and soon! Temarius, how is everything going on your side of the town?!"

"_The evacuation is done, everybody's been moved out. Right now all that we're trying to do is take on this mech, and it's kicking our butts._"

"Temarius, listen closely, lets leave the mech be for now. You said it yourself that that part of town has been cleared out! Right now I need you to come over here and pick me up and tell Gear to take Jessica out of here."

There was moment of silence on the other side of the line. He must have been thinking about the logic of that statement. Of course why would you need to if a friend was in trouble?

"_Ok_," he responded,"_I heard Zero's cry for help. Just remember that we have a big, four-legged, war machine that needs to be stopped_."

"I will, now get over here!"

* * *

(**On the other side of the conversation...**)

Gargoyle looked over at Gear who shrugged his shoulders,"I'm sure that the city can afford a few blown up buildings."

Temarius shook his head and flew towards city hall, with Richie in tow.

* * *

(**At the hospital**)

Madison's heartbeat reflected the moment right then and there, horrifying. The chunk of building on top of her wouldn't budge, and the thing in front of her must have known it by the way that she was walking. The machine took everything in, from Madison trying to get out from under the rubble, to Dakota City's hero, unconscious and soon lifeless form lying on the floor.

It grinned in it's own sadistic way, watching the young heroine squirm underneath the fallen rubble. It licked it's lips as it cocked the massive cannon attached to her arm and sat down on one knee before the girl next to it. Madison cringed as the cyborg licked her cheek like a dog and licked her lips once more.

"The smell of death is all over you." it said in it's computer generated voice.

As it stood up it charged it's weapon and aimed right for her skull, she was finished!

"I'm going to enjoy collecting your skull afterwards and adding it to my collection."

To Ladytron's right, a mere second away from obliterating the person in front of her, a light came out of nowhere, and something collided with her. At the time she didn't know what, but after a quick glimpse at her waist she saw a woman with wings. She was beautiful beyond compare, and wore pearl white armor with gold trimmings, and at the moment had a fierce glare on her face.

"What the hell are you, and where the hell did you come from!" Ladytron yelled.

"From hell I do not come, rather somewhere greater." the other said as she threw the cyborg through a strip mall.

Ladytron expected a fight, but nothing of this magnitude. She hadn't a single clue about who this woman was or where she came from, but she was about to get it. Looking through the holes in the walls that she had made she lined up her rifle with her winged attacker and fired off a fully charged shot.

The ball of energy that came out disintegrated the strip mall into nothing as it headed for it's target. The thing that got her was that this newcomer didn't move at all from where she was standing and actually looked like she was waiting for the shot. She waited a few seconds for it to hit her and when it did she laughed.

"Stupid bitch, she got what she deserv..."

She paused in mid-sentence when she heard her radar tracker go off. She pulled up the radar on the hud in her eyes and saw that the very same spot where that woman had been standing was still occupied. Leaving the hud she saw it with her own eyes and couldn't believe it, she was still standing there.

"H-h-h-h-how did you?" she said in a moment of shock.

"Maxine Manchester, your time comes later, for now..."

The woman disappeared in a bright light, then reappeared right behind her. Ladytron tried to respond to the sudden appearance of the woman that survived what should have been death, but failed when she couldn't lift her arms. With a single flick on the forehead, the fierce and deadly Ladytron was knocked unconscious.

"Sleep well." the winged woman said as she walked away disappearing into a ball of light.

* * *

(**Five minutes later at Dakota Memorial...**)

Temarius and Richard had arrived just in the knick of time. If it had been a few minutes longer, both me and Jessica would have been dead. That would have been humiliating losing to a bunch of machines.

I asked Temarius if he had heard anything about Jessica's condition, and he shook his head. With this I could only assume the worst. At that moment I acknowledged that both static and subzero, two heroes from this very city, had died because of my quick and selfish thinking. It was eating at me from the inside until we reached the hospital when the moment of truth would arrive.

I looked across the street from the hospital and saw that a building had collapsed recently, and the mass amount of casualties that our enemy had taken.

'_Even if they died, at least they fought a good battle._' I thought as I approached what was left of the front door.

Looking in I could see fallen parts of the building and, and...

"Where did subzero and static's bodies go? Where are the bodies?!" I yelled in frustration.

Suddenly a thought came to my mind and my crosshairs appeared. If the bodies weren't here then whoever attacked them must have taken them as trophies, like a bunch of savages. I had given up all hope of finding anything when I heard a rustling noise coming from behind the help desk, which was still intact. I gave the signal with my hand and told Temarius to stay back while I checked to see what it was.

Drawing both my desert eagles, I walked in and slowly made my way over to the desk. Making my way over I thought that Zero's attacker would be behind the desk waiting to ambush me, maybe even try to use me as a bargaining tool to get out of there alive, which I know they wouldn't. Then with a quick and solid movement I jumped over the desk to meet my attacker, only to be encased in ice.

"Marcas! Omygosh! I thought that you were somebody else!" Subzero apologized.

I could do nothing but cringe in my frozen state, while Gargoyle got a good laugh out of it."Sorry Marcas, but it looks like you just got the cold shoulder!"

I rolled my eyes and waited while he charged heat into his hands. On the other hand, Static was now starting to come to out of the knockout punch that he had recieved earlier. Starting from my head down, I was being unfrozen and when my mouth was able to move, I decided to say a few choice words to madison before I asked,"How in the hell did you survive a near death situation?"

"What?"

"What I mean to say is, how did you escape the situation that you were in before we got here?"

Zero tried to pull the memory that she had of that moment out of the corner that it was in but it didn't seem to work. For five minutes she sat there trying to think while my midsection was being unfrozen.

"Do you remember it at all, or was it bad because were you being overpowered by a simple rookie mistake?"

Zero stopped her train of thought and started walking away from us. I didn't know why until I went back through my words and thought about it.

"This wasn't a rookie mistake, believe me." she said facing the opposite direction. "This was a planned attack by a cold-blooded killer, even Static can tell you that."

"She's right." said his voice from behind the desk.

As he stood up he brushed the dust from the building off of him and popped his shoulder back into place. "I thought it was human at first until it popped up out of the building and threw me like a football."

"And then what happened?" I said with a hint of impatience in my voice.

Static scratched his head and grinned,"That's the thing, I was knocked out by the impact, I don't remember anything after."

After I kicked off the last chunk of ice on my boots, I stood up and walked over to Subzero to try to set things straight. "So from what I understand is that whoever attacked you threw Static at you, knocked him unconcious, and somehow trapped you under part of the building over by the desk? I don't follow."

Gargoyle pressed an icon on his gauntlet and looked around the room. Using advanced tracking technology he replayed the information that Static and Zero presented and ran it through in front of him. Replaying it a few times over gave him a sense of what happened.

"Boss, I have an idea." he said as he pulled up the hologram again.

* * *

(**At the hotel room...**)

Miranda was done with doing command and control for the day, even if there was still a rampaging mech plowing it's way through the city. It was sloppy of Red to move Gargoyle and Gear away from the mech, but if what Zero said had ben true then it was necessary. Looking at the map of the city in front of her she saw everybody's locations at the moment, even Gear and Jessica's that were now outside of the city at a civilian hospital. It was funny, almost comical that Miranda was actually worried about her, the one who always poked at her for her size. Even after all the shit that that crazy girl had put her through she still had a place in her heart for the heroine.

Just then she heard a knock at the door and checked the city map again. She didn't see any signals near her, and heard no messages before telling that anybody was heading her way. Assuming the worst, and putting Marcas' money to good use, she pulled out the Ak-74u that he gave her just in case Detroit happened all over again. Silently she walked over to the door and peeked through the peephole in the door. On the other side she saw a member of the hotel staff with a cart in front of him, a neutral look across his face.

"I didn't order anything." she said through the door.

"Are you sure?" the bellhop replied.

She opened the door and hid the sub-machine gune behind her back and replied,"Yes I am sure, please have a nice day."

Closing the door she sighed a sigh of relief and walked back to her desk.

**KNOCK**

**KNOCK**

**KNOCK**

Turning around she recognized the sound that the bellhop had made just a minute earlier and put the gun on the table behind her. This time she stomped over the door and pulled it open.

"What is it this time! Missing luggage!" she yelled in a blind fury.

To her shock and astonishment it wasn't the bellhop that stood before her in the hallway, but rather the man that was supposedly offed in Detroit, along with somebody else.

"Remember me." he said in a bone chilling tone.

Miranda turned to run to but was caught by the foot and tripped up where she stood. She landed on her stomach where she could see the other person, that she could tell was a woman, walking the room looking for something. Without warning the Slade look alike that brought her to the ground sat on her back and lifted her head up by her hair.

"All right, now's your chance to live to see another day without being held out a window. Me and my partner here are looking for your laptop, you know the one that the Red Crosshairs doesn't know about with all the information on possible teammates. Tell us where it is and I won't have to do something naughty to you while you're on the ground here."

"Well that escalated quickly." said the woman with her arms crossed.

"What else did you expect? She has information and I want it now!"

The woman face-palmed and said,"Typical idiot, look, all we want is the laptop and we leave you alone. Is that ok?"

Miranda just laid there keeping quiet, because she knew what they were talking about. Temarius had encoded it overnight while Marcas and Madison were on the roof talking about her possible membership with Red's Army. That laptop contained files of every possible member that could be recruited. Every person on that computer could also become a member of the Justice League if they wanted to, and giving them that information would endanger their lives. So as she continued to do, her lips were sealed.

"Enough is enough! She doesn't want to talk, so i'm going to make her talk!" the Slade look a like yelled as he smashed her face against the carpeted flooring.

"Where is it, where's the laptop!" he yelled as his friend started tearing the room apart.

Miranda continued her silence, even if it meant more of a burden for her, she would protect the future members of Red's Army no matter what the cost. The man of top of her knew this and came up with a new idea of how to make her speak. Without warning he pulled her up to her feet by her hair and threw her into the bathroom.

He turned the handles on the shower and stopped up the drain when they both got in there, locking the door as they got in. Waiting a few minutes, the tub eventually was filled to the brim, and the conditions were perfect for what was to happen next. Grabbing Miranda by the back of the head he tried to push her head into the water, something that Miranda knew would be used for torture. She tried to resist the strength of the man behind her but it was all for nothing when her head became submerged in the water beneath.

Her arms flailed in every direction, trying to reach his face while she couldn't see him, and all to no avail, that was until he stuck his face close to the water. Immediately she grabbed the bottom of his mask and pushed him back. Then when she was able to breathe and got out of the water she stunned and slammed his head into the bathroom counter which made him a little tipsy.

Grant tried to fight back, but it was for nothing when she pulled the hair dryer from the wall and bashed him over the head with it. Surprisingly the cheaply-made hotel accessory did the trick and knocked him unconcious.

"You may have gotten the best of me last time, but this time you learned that you messed with the wrong woman!" She said as she karate chopped the air in front of her.

'_Now to deal with the other one_.' She thought to herself as she pressed a button on her watch.

* * *

(**Back at the Hospital...**)

After we had gotten our act together, we started to put together how we would take down the mech. Gear had sent X-ray scans that he had taken during the last fight with the behemoth of a machine and sent it to us while he was with Jessica on the outskirts of town. She was stable, and back to her obnoxious and charming self, which was a good thing after seeing her lose as much blood as she did. I figured that I needed to give her something else to fight with, other than that sword of hers.

Over the radio we could hear the news of the national guard finally coming into the city, and thus far hadn't encountered any problems, other than the piles of dead robots on the streets. They can thank us for that. The only thing that stood left of the attack was the mech, which would be easier to take down with all of us together.

"All right, listen up everybody, we..."

**BEEEP** **BEEEEP** **BEEEP!**

Everybody looked at me as I froze in place, recognizing a distress call that I had given to a certain somebody. Realizing what that was, I looked at everybody else and pulled out my cell phone.

"What was that all about Red? You look like you've seen a ghost?" Said Static.

"I need to get to the hotel and fast" I said as I typed in a few numbers into my cell.

"I can get you there." Said Gargoyle.

I shook my head,"No! You are needed to help Subzero and Static take down the mech downtown, I have my own means of transportation."

A few seconds later a bright red Ferrari pulled up, and the door opened before me.

"Go! I have somewhere that I need to be as well!" I yelled as I hopped in and shut the door.

'_I just hope that I can make it there in time_'

* * *

(**Back at the Hotel five minutes later...**)

Miranda made the decision to take out the other one that was in the room with her, and made a terrible mistake. Rose had been waiting outside the door ever since Grant's head hit the counter, and she was more than ready to take her on. The second Miranda's gun came into sight, Rose stripped it out of her hands and tried to get a shot in, but Miranda wouldn't have any of it. Instead, it was slapped out her hands and knocked across the room.

Miranda pushed past Rose and tried to get it, but was tripped a few feet away by an ever persistent Ravager. Using the heel of her shoe she kicked off the gun that she had put on the table earliwatched sat back as it fell into her hands. With a grin in her face she pulled the trigger, hoping to see the woman in front of her ripped to shreds by hot lead, what happend instead was a very audible clicking noise.

"Didn't think that I would let you have a chance to off me so easily, now would ya?" She said with a smile.

Miranda grimaced, but made the best out it with what she had. Using the stock like a club she swung it at Rose's face and made a hit, then threw the gun to her side and made her way over to the pistol by the window. Once it was in hand, she finally realized that the ball was now in her court and aimed it at Rose with an expression of triumph on her face.

"Got anything else to say before I turn you into Swiss cheese?" Said Miranda as she stood up.

Rose nodded as while his something behind her back. "Yes actually.."

From behind her back she pulled out the AK that Miranda tossed aside, this time it had a clip attached to it. Miranda froze in her place as she looked down the barrel of the Russian made weapon, not in solace like she did when Marcas gave her the gun, buno rather in fear.

"I've got more bullets, and Kevlar armor to boot, and what do you have, a pea shooter?"

Miranda looked at her gun and stood her ground, even if she was underpowered and outgunned, at least she would go out in a blaze of glory. Then something "entered" the conversation that gave her a new hope. Rose on the other hand knew that she was about to win, the question was why the girl in front of her had a smile on her face.

In a few seconds, that question was answered by the sound of a pistol cocking behind her.

"Hello there my friend. You must be the unfriendly person from next door that was making all the racket last night" I said as I took the AK out of her hands.

"How did you know that she was under attack?" Asked Rose.

"Simple, it's a Russian's intuition."

Funny enough I got the same look from the woman in front of me as I did Miranda, the universal facepalm. I reached into my pocket and pulled out a twistie tie that I had just in case of a situation like this and bound our attacker like a common criminal.

Speaking Of being treated like a criminal,"All right, You have the right to remain silent when questioned. Anything you say or do may be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to consult an attorney before speaking to the police and to have an attorney present during questioning now or in the future. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed for you before any questioning, if you wish..."

"You've gotta be shitting me." Said the woman in front of me.

I shrugged my shoulders,"I can't help it if I watch cops every now the then."

"Marcas."

I looked up at Miranda as I started tying the attacker's feet together with the cable from the lamp right next to me. "Yes?"

"You just made a skewerism."

I looked at her with confusion and asked,"What?"

"I think that you've been overexposed to Jessica for too long."

"I dont think so" I replied back.

"I think that you need to shut up in general" Came a voice from the bathroom.

I turned to see who it was and immediately grabbed for my sickle. It was the Slade look a like, and he was holding his head. I looked over at Miranda and saw her flex an arm.

"Are you going to give up?" I asked him.

The look a like thought about it for a moment before he looked over to Miranda then put his hands up. "Ok, I give."

I hesitated for a moment with the sickle still in my hand and walked up to him.

"You had better not to be lying to me or else."

"Or else what?"

I pulled out the hammer and showed it to him.

"Or else you're going to be on the receiving end of this right here, and it's going to give you more than a simple headache."

I whipped out another zip tie or two and and wrapped them around his arms once I had them behind his back.

"Your father, Slade Wilson, used a similar tactic while I was with the Shadow Warriors you know?"

He let in a deep breath then sat down.

"Please don't mention that name anywhere around me...wait, how did you know he's my father?" asked Grant.

"Simple, I just recently remembered of Slade talking about offspring back in China. I knew that they would despise him of course, like how we all did."

Grant looked over at rose and sighed,"He put you under the same kind of torment that we had to got through."

"Da, and more."

"Of course I can't vouch for my stepsister that virtually worshipped the man, so much that she cut out her own eye for him."

I looked over at the woman on the floor and watched as Miranda pulled the mask off of her face and showed the truth, she was missing an eye.

"Why obsess over somebody like that? I mean he's a monster that knows no bounds." said Miranda.

Rose looked up at me and gave me a glare,"You wouldn't understand...he is my father, and after joining him, I realized how powerful he was and I couldn't let go. Loyalty had to be proved and I was probably the most loyal apprentice that he ever had."

"That still doesn't justify working with the heartless monster that he is." said Miranda

"Enough of this, you're trying to get off topic!" I yelled. "What are you here for and why?"

Grant was the first to answer, even though Rose didn't want to. "We came here for a laptop that your friend has. It has vital information about all of the future members of your buddy club and we want it."

"What is he talking about?" I asked Miranda

She got up from the spot where she was sitting anf reached under her bed for something, when she brought her arm back out she had the laptop in question.

"While you were on the roof with Madison the other night, Temarius was installing security software that was far beyond the stuff that I bought. Later on I used it to look up more people to join our group, and compiled a nice little list for the future."

"And you didn't tell me about it?" I asked with my arms folded.

"Marcas, you were out cold last night, same as Jessica. I tried knocking on your door and calling your cell, but I guess it would be hard to hear over the 'snoring symphony' going on in there."

"I didn't even realize that I snored that loud."

Miranda nodded,"Yeah, back in Detroit I had to plug my headphones because you were so loud. Hell, we even had a few people knock on our door to tell us to turn the volume down."

I stood there with a look of shock on my face, until Miranda broke a smile.

"I was just kidding, you're not that bad."

* * *

(**Out in the city...**)

The mech and it's pilot were looking all around for something to obliterate and buildings seemed to be the only thing in stock. Since the city had been evacuated, not a single sould had been spotted since the heroes that attacked earlier. One was recognized as being from this city, the other was unrecognizable, but formidable. Both knew how to utilize technology, and found ways to disable the weapons and movement of the mech whenever they could, so it was a priority to take them out as fast as possible.

Checking his radar the pilot spotted three dots on the screen. One was a familiar sight from earlie, the other was emitting electricity, and the last was producing cold temperatures that rivaled the coldest places on earth. He turned the mech to face the direction that they were coming from and readied all the weapons to fire. When he checked the radar again he saw that they had split up and expanded the radar again. Somehow they had disappeared.

"How did they disappear?" the pilot asked himself.

He then tried to use a thermal tracking device to try and locate them and came up empty handed. He was about to turn off the tracker until he noticed a sudden spike in temperature somewhere around him. When he looked at the screen he saw a spike in cold temperatures, and when he saw where it was, it was all too late. Bursting from the street below the mechanical monstrosity came an iceburg that enguled it from below and threw it off balance. The walker jumped off the frozen pinnacle in the middle of the square, and just barely latched onto a building nearby. The pilot looked out the cockpit and got a goog look at the thing that caused it, now standing on the tip of it.

"Hey you big heap of scrap, come at me bro!" yelled Subzero at the top of her lungs.

The mech angled itself on the building that it had anchored on to face it's opponent and swiveled all of it's weapons at the iceburg below. First the miniguns on it's front opened fire and bounced off the ice below, then a barrage of missiles hit it at it's base and made a few dents that were easily repaired by the woman on top of everything.

"Is that all you've got?" she said.

A screeching noise came from the mech as the front of it opened up to reveal a nice sized laser cannon, that was charged and ready to go. Various parts of it spun around the center and the cannon discharged what it had in store. The ice mountain that had formed below Madison was split in half by the blast and crumbled underneath her feet. Being fast on her feet she summoned the water from the sewer below and started forming an ice trail to escape it all, but the mech wouldn't have that. As she tried to make and escape, the mech opened up with the miniguns again and followed her with a hail of bullets.

Each second became crucial. If Subzero stopped what she was doing would probably look like she'd been through a meat grinder. Then, somewhere behind her she heard a loud noise, followed by a revving sound. Come to find out the mech behind her had jumped off the building and was in high speed pursuit of her. One of the pods on its roof opened and a missile flew out. Zero heard the rocket on its rear end ignite and for a quick escape route.

There was an overpass up ahead made for the train system that went around town, and today it was going to get a makeover. Subzero quickly changed direction and flew as close to the bridge as possible, ducking and winding her way through the decades old steel beams and concrete. When she flew out the other side on her ice trail, she expected to hear and explosion of some kind, but there wasn't. Instead the missile came flying out from under the overpass and continued chase, this time it was closing on her. Deep down she had a feeling that this rocket wasn't going to slow down if she turned and blasted it with ice, that and it was too close to do that. There was the other option though.

Changing direction again, Subzero guided the Mech like a hungry animal with food, this time the tables were about to be turned in her favor for once. Around the corner Static was waiting on a huge metal platform in the middle of the road and from the looks of it, he had been waiting there for quite some time.

As soon as the mech came around the corner, he channeled electricity from his hands to the metal below him and moved out of the way. Lucky for him the mech didn't notice a thing and was too focused on chasing down, but while he was still on the side walk he shot off a perfectly aimed bolt of electricity at the missile, shooting it out of the sky.

Once the mech ran onto the metal plate it stopped everything. It looked down to see what the problem was and realized that the metal plate had been magnetized, and that it was a trap. It tried to get off the platform but every time it tried to lift a leg up, it would just reattach itself to the metal below. Then it tried to fire off it's guns and missiles but the launch bays wouldn't open and the mini guns stood still, so it was stuck and defenseless, just as they planned.

Down the street, the roar of what sounded like a fighter jet echoed all along the boulevard. The pilot of the mech looked to see who it was and only caught a blur of blue and steel heading straight for it. To it's side Static reappeared and put enough electricity in it to make the mech hover off the platform for a moment, and a moment was that was needed. The blue and steel blur that had been flying at it like a bullet connected with it and sent it flying into an apartment complex down the street. The building held itself up, even with the force of the impact and the size of the hole that was left in it. Nothing left the cloud of debris the followed except for the source of the supersonic sound from earlier, Gargoyle.

Just as soon as he sent the mech into the building he flew out of there, and while it was still down he attached a new little invention that he had worked on overnight. Once he attached it to his wrist, a heads up display appeared over his eyes. Using the virtual interface he pointed out four places on the building and aimed the weapon.

"Confirm, launch missiles now." He said to the HUD.

The device on his his wrist cycled around for a moment, then fired all four missiles at once. One missile went for the mech itself, armed with a bunker busting warhead, the other three were your standard rockets that would be powerful enough to bring the whole house down. The missiles hit their targets, and in a spectacular fashion brought the whole house down on the beaten mech below.

Once Gargoyle touched down on the pavement below he got a pat on the back that he didn't expect.

"Nice job" said Static.

"Thanks, I spent all night making that launcher and the missiles."

"What happened to the pilot?" Asked Madison from the side.

Gargoyle flew into the wreckage and came back with a big piece of metal in his hand.

"There wasn't any pilot, at least not here."

"Then where are they?" She asked

Temarius shrugged his shoulders while he looked at the computer that he was holding in his hand.

"I don't know, but the circuitry in that computer is still together. I think I might be able to find a location off of that."

Down the street behind them they heard a revving noise of some kind and saw a familiar bright red Ferrari heading their way. Once it came to a stop, both Me and Miranda stepped out, along with both of the Ravagers.

Static looked at both of them and scratched his chin. "I guess that these two were the reason that you had to the hotel?"

"Yeah, they almost killed me." Said Miranda

"Why would they attack her." Asked Madison

I walked in the middle of the group and held the laptop that they were searching for.

"This right here."

"A laptop?" Said Static.

I tossed the device back to Miranda,"Da, they wanted it because it held the dossiers of people that might join my army."

"I guess that my security suite worked if they're trying to snatch it from us." said Temarius with a shit eating grin on his face.

Miranda looked at the area around her and said,"One of the bigger questions is where did all of these robots come from."

"That's what I want to know too, and that's what we're going to find out." I said as I turned and faced our prisoners.

Off in the distance the sound of a helicopter could be heard, and down the way that we came earlier a tank came around the corner with a few soldiers walking around it. We didn't see them come down the street until one of them shouted,"Freeze! We have you all surrounded!"

**To Be Continued...**


	10. The Interview from hell

The man in uniform on the other side of the table slammed his fists to send the message to me that he was in charge of this whole interrogation. Then like the typical bad cop he threw a few photos on the table and got in my face.

"I don't care who you and your friends are, you seem to be the only link in this situation to what just happened today in Dakota. Now talk!"

I looked at the photos and saw pictures of Madison flying around the mech on a path of ice, along with me and Jessica on the top of the city hall. All of these photos pointed to us being the good guys and yet the man in front of me continued to be and asshole.

"Look, all that we were doing was saving the day, that's our job."

The soldier slammed his fist on table again and gave me the most scrunched up face that I had ever seen before.

"No that's our job dipshit, yours is to stay the hell out of our way and let us do our job!"

This man was definitely driving me crazy. We responded first, so what gives him the right to judge us?

"Maybe if we were the Justice League you would be kissing our asses right now." I said with a grin.

The soldier grabbed me by the collar of my jacket and pulled me across the table so that we were face to face.

"Now you listen hear you little punk, we don't like super-freaks, especially the commander. That's why he assigned me to you because you seem to be the leader type."

"So your commanding officer has something against superheroes?"

Out of nowhere came a punch to the side of my face that sent me across the room. I knew that it was the interrogator in front of me, but I couldn't believe it. There was the tough cop routine, then there was what we were trained to do back in Siberia, and this seemed to be more like the latter. Walking around the table he picked me up again and gave me another good punch to the jaw.

"And how are you getting away with this?" I asked.

He cracked his knuckles and picked me up off the ground just intimidate me more.

"Let me tell you something right now. We're not your normal soldiers in the battlefield ok? We were sent to your location at that exact time to capture you and bring you into our custody."

This caught me off guard,"What?"

"Yeah, Uncle Sam wants to know what you're up to, so we captured you before you could move on."

He threw me back into my chair to take a seat while he pulled a file from the bag he had.

"In here it says that you were recruiting members for your squad, or should I say 'Army'?"

I just stared him down as he walked from side to side of the room, reading off what was in the Manila folder.

"The director of homeland security authorized your capture along with your friends because you are considered, 'too dangerous' of a group of people to be out on the loose, besides, what good is it to have yet another group of vigilantes out and about?"

Sitting there I thought about what he was saying and laughed,"Really? I thought that this world needed more people that aren't like the Justice League in order to do some good. Also, since when did we become dangerous individuals? All that we're doing is saving lives, not wrecking them."

"I'll believe that when pigs fly." he said as he turned and left the room.

'_Great, what's going to happen next?_'

Just a few seconds later the lone door in the room opened and a woman with two guards by her side came in. One stood behind me and unlocked the cuffs around my wrists, while the other put a bag of things in front of me. After I was let go the guards left the room and locked the door behind them.

"Mister Valitov, you need to learn that you can't associate yourself with individuals that are wanted by the US government."

"And who would those indiviuals be?" I asked.

"Grant and Rose Wilson."

I had suspected as much. The grunts that captured us must have thought that we were working with them, of course how could that be possible when we had them restrained?

"I'm guessing that you're going to ask me why I was with them, am I right?"

"Yes actually, I want to know what they were doing in Dakota with an army of robots."

Deep down I knew that if I told her about the laptop, then she would confiscate it, and worse off target the people stored on it. I couldn't allow this to happen.

"They were after me and my friends."

"I don't seem to believe you." she said as she pulled out a file. "A man that was kicked out of and blacklisted by the Justice League, doesn't sound very trustworthy."

"Really? You don't think that i've maybe changed ever since that file has been updated?" I said with a grin.

The woman scoffed,"I forgot to mention former member of the Shadow Warriors. Is that up to date enough for you?" My silence afterwards proved her point.

"I already told you the reason, now let me go."

She must have realized the lie because she pushed me back into my seat and pointed to the file again.

"From the looks of it, you're assembling a team. Your little testimony earlier proves it."

I shrugged my shoulders,"So what if i'm assembling a team? Maybe I just want a league of my own."

"I don't believe that at all! There is no motive!"

"Actually you're wrong. If you can remember my testimony from earlier I stated that I didn't like the league and that we needed somebody else out there, or do you forget?"

My interrogator pulled back for a moment and knocked on the door. The door opened and in came another woman, this one showing a little more authority than the last.

"You're free to go Marcas" She said.

I picked up my things off the table and started putting my gun holsters around my shoulders when the other woman stopped me.

"You know that you were very close to being sent to Guantanamo just now don't you?"

I contined to put my gear on avoided having a conversation, because I wanted nothing to do with these people.

"Your friends are going to be released with you."

"Good."

Hopefully she was going to get the message to stop talking to me and leave me alone, but from her stance, she wasn't going to back off. So instead of taking a nicer approach with things she leaned on the table in front of me to get my attention, something was up.

"If you don't trust, my name is..."

"Why should I give a shit." I said.

"You should care because I just saved you from having your ass deported back to Russia! We were this close to splitting up you from your team and ending your little superhero club."

I didn't stop what I was doing just for her revelation. I knew that I could escape from here if I wanted to, I was just letting the guard from earlier think that he was in control.

"Look I know what you did was nice and all, but I didn't really want to stick around in some dark and mysterious, government-run facility, and your words aren't going to help you. So if you don't mind stepping out of my way. "

She looked down at me for a moment and sighed,"Ok fine, I guess that you won't know where those robots came from will you?"

"And does it look like I care?"

She crossed her arms over her chest and frowned at me."And why don't you? One of your teammates nearly died during the whole thing and was almost killed afterwards, so you should care."

The last seven words rang through my mind as They left her lips. What in the world did she mean By that?

"I see that I finally caught your attention." She said with a smirk.

"What happened?"

* * *

(**Over in the infirmary...**)

The sight in front of me stirred something in me. Jessica was lying in a bed, out like a lightbulb for once. She didn't look as scarred up as she did earlier, but there was a fresh looking scar trailing all the way down from the top right temple of her forehead to the right nostril of her nose. The doctors around her were currently sealing it up, and cleaning some of the blood off that still remained on her.

"What...what happened?" I asked

"While she was at the field hospital that was set up outside the city, a undocumented nurse came into the tent that she was in and tried to kill her."

I pounded my fist on the glass, catching the doctors attention and asked,"Who was this nurse, and where are they?"

The woman shrugged her shoulders then pulled a plastic bag out of her pocket. It looked like an evidence bag from a crime scene, and since Jessica was alive it meant that the killer failed what they attempted to do.

"This was found at the scene of the crime after mister foley chased off the fake nurse. If he hadn't been there, she would've gotten more then that scar on her face."

Gear walked out of the shadows behind her and tossed me something. "That wasn't the only thing she left behind either. I found this and brought it with me after I went to back to check on Jessica."

Further looking at what he tossed me in the light was a card, and on it a single red crosshair. I should have known that my father would have sent somebody to level the playing field since Miranda and Madison weren't killed. This just ticked me off and made the government lackey right next to me try to take it from my hands.

"What's on that card?" She asked as she tried to gate it again.

"None of your damn business." I replied.

Immediately she pulled out her cellphone and dialed a number in. "Now Marcas, I want to help you, but right now you need to help me. Now hand over the card."

"Now why would I do that?" I asked as I slipped it in my back pocket.

"Because all I have to do is dial nine on my cell phone and Jessica's IV drip starts injecting cyanide into her bloodstream."

At that moment my heart skipped a beat, just like when Slade shot Tasha years ago. My fists balled up and I started shaking. What would be the point of pissing me off, if I could easily snap her neck afterwards?

"You wouldn't dare." I said reaching for my pistol.

"And I wouldn't test me if I were you."

"Why not?"

Suddenly a grin appeared on her face. "Because somebody has a bead on you down the hall."

Not a second later did the words come out of her mouth when a bullet went into the ceiling above me. I turned around to see who it was to draw both of my pistols. From my position I could see the scoped eyepiece on his face.

"Hello Deadshot."

The man down the hall laughed and pulled back the hammer on his sniper rifle.

"Well, well, well, if it isn't the brat that saved Shadow's little buddy last year." He said with a smile.

"You mean Dusk."

"Whatever, phase, why can't I just kill this guy?"

Turning back to the woman behind me I saw that she had Gear in a stranglehold, and a gun pointed at me.

"I told you to wait until after I dealt with him to call me that you fucking dipshit!"

Now I had both guns aiming different directions down the hall, not knowing which target to take out first. If I shot Deadshot, then she would probably kill Gear, and likewise the other way around. It reminded me of the time that I almost shot Superman in front of the hall of justice, except the statistics favored me this time around. Looking at both Deadshot and 'Phase's' banter back and forth, I had a plan come together in my head. All I had to do was piss off Deadshot enough to do it right.

'_Here goes nothing_' I thought with a mental sigh.

"Wow Deadshot, since when do you let people talk you you like that? After all you are a badass mercenary for hire."

I saw him look at 'Phase' through his sniper scope and laugh.

"You're right. Who does this person think that she is?" he said while lightly pulling on the trigger.

"What the hell are you doing you stupid merc! I already payed you fifty million!"

The merc grinned under his mask,"Yeah, you ALREADY payed me, which means that I can do whatever I want right now without losing a paycheck."

'_Oh how quickly the tables had turned._'

Phase was starting to sweat in that officer's uniform that she was wearing and I could see it, and if I could see it then Deadshot knew that she already dead. He adjusted the sights on his scope and pulled the trigger slightly tighter than he did before.

"You know who the last person was that payed me then mouthed off to me?" he asked.

"Do I even want to know?" she replied.

"Yeah, because it will be you."

My crosshairs came alive, and time slowed down for me. I grabbed Phase's arm and threw her into Deadshot's sights, then grabbed Gear and threw the both of us through the door to Jessica's room. I didn't see it behind us, but a few seconds after we had made it to safety and after Deadshot fired into the hallway, a portal appeared and it sucked Phase in. Once everything had played out, Deadshot was left sitting there, without a kill.

"What the? I missed? I MISSED?!" he yelled down the hall.

He slammed his fist onto his sniper rifle, then threw it to the side.

'_How did she get away?!_' he thought as he pulled off his mask.

He then heard something from down the hall and saw the broken pieces of a door scattered on the floor. Instantly a thought crossed his mind.

'_There's my consolation prize._'

* * *

(**In the room**)

I told gear to grab Jessica and take her into the bathroom to hide while I dealt with what was coming next. Since I didn't hear the sound of a round piercing bone and flesh, I could only assume that that 'Phase' person teleported out of there before she would be killed. This would only lead to Deadshot trying to seek revenge on me for what me and the warriors had done to him on multiple occasions.

I could hear his boots stomping on the floor, slowly coming down the hall with each second. There wasn't a lot of time to prepare, and I had to make due with what I had in the room with me, which was just a bed and...wait a minute!

* * *

(**Deadshot**)

Every few steps he would swivel himself and his gun gauntlets towards the ends of the hall, just to make sure that there wasn't anything else coming for him. He then came up to the room that the girl was in and looked inside. There was a large privacy curtain which covered half of the room, and a possible spot where the Red Crosshairs could be hiding, a bed, and and entrance to what probably was the bathroom.

The first thing that crossed his line of sight was the privacy curtain and what was behind it, more so what would be left behind it after he did what he was going to do. Pulling the loading mechanisms back on his gauntlets he unleashed a barrage of bullets into the curtain, and reloaded for another round. Before he fired he heard something coming from the door on the other side of the room. He turned and this time quietly tip-toed over to the door to see what it was, and that was where he made his mistake.

Through the first and only barrage I had been hugging the wall and stayed in place while his attention averted to the bathroom, away from me. When he was far enough away I aimed one desert eagle through the curtain and aimed it at his hands. Firing two shots I disabled his gun gauntlets and caught the merc off guard. He looked at me with surprise in his eyes and threw the weapons to the ground.

"You know what you should have never done Deadshot?"

He looked at me in defeat as he raised his hands over his head and said,"I should've listened to my gut and checked what was behind the curtain."

I walked over to him and patted him on the head like a dog then,"Good boy, see you do have a brain."

I opened the door and let Gear and Jessica walk out. Seeing her on her own two feet surprised me because she was out just a few minutes ago because of the drugs that had been pumped into her, but I guess the sound of gunshots would wake anybody up. Behind me I heard the sound of boots running out of the room and saw Deadshot running out Like the coward he was. I just shook my head and walked out I with the others.

"So how do we get out of here?" Jessica asked.

I looked down both ends of the hall and caught the sight of one of Deadshot's boots from the corner of my eye and ran towards it.

"If anything else, the coward will lead us out." I said while running.

Around the corner was another hall that had door after door of empty rooms. Up ahead I could see Deadshot still running as fast as he could to a pair of blue doors down the hall which never seemed to move the entire time that I had been running. This was weird, really weird. It felt like I had been running in place the whole time, and got nowhere like the staircase on Ultra Italian plumber 46. The oonly exception was that I didn't need any diamonds to make it to the top and this wasnt a staircase, it was a hallway. I didn't think about it until then, but I might be in a dream of some kind. It all fits the bill with the endless hallway, the similar rooms that never change color or shape, Deadshot running from me instead of fighting like a man, and the fact that both gear and Jessica had disappeared.

'_I think that my point has just been proven_' I thought as I stopped in place.

A gust of wind came in behind me, along with the sound of slamming doors. When I turned around I saw the same pair of blue doors that had just been in front of me, and the hall that I had been running down was behind me, way behind me. Something whispered in my ear that told me to go through, but I didn't want to. Then I heard Tasha through the doors.

"Marcas, where are you?" She said

Somebody knew how to pull my heart strings, because that sounded exactly like the Tasha that I knew, but in there was the problem. It been a few years after I had last seen Tasha, her voice should have changed, but this one sounded the same. The only way that whatever this way knew what Tasha sounded like when I last saw her would have to be in my head, so this had to be a dream. Against what I had just told myself I still opened the door went through with it, and what awaited me confused me.

It was a dark room with a light in the center. There was an object illuminated by the light sitting directly underneath it that made out of gold. It looked like a dagger because of it's size, but the jagged edges on it distorted it's look and made me curious as to what was going to happen next. Without anybody to pick it up the dagger somehow started levitating in the air until it was level with me, then it stopped and stood up in mid air as if somebody was holding it. A form came out of the darkness, the form of the woman in the officers uniform.

"Who are you?" I asked.

The woman smiled,"Succubus would suffice for now Marcas."

I reached into my coat for one of desert eagles and came up empty handed.

"You were just about to pull out one of your desert eagles, weren't you?" She said in a cocky tone.

"What do you want from me?"

She twirled the blade that she had around for bit until she threw it at me and yelled,"Consistentes!"

My body freeze and I could feel it. The muscles in my arms and legs tensed up and refused to move under any circumstance. The blade stayed true and flew closer to me as I struggled to move anything under my neck. As I tried to move it stopped in mid air and she teleported herself in front of me.

With a flick of the wrist everything blacked out...

* * *

(**?**)

I felt something hit me, almost like a hand. There was a voice behind it that sounded all too familiar, I just couldn't place it.

"Come on Jessica, just stop it."

"Why? He hasn't woken up yet, besides I'm getting out years of all the little things that just pissed me off." Someone said as they slapped me again.

Immediately I realized that I was back to reality opened my eyes to see Jessica about bitch slap me again. Before she could do it again I stuck out both of my arms in front of me and shoved her off.

"Holy crap! Our leader lives!" Yelled Jessica as she bowed before me.

I looked around her and saw Miranda sitting in the front sea...seat? I think that I'm not in Kansas anymore.

Miranda looked in the back of the van and smiled,"Glad you're awake. You've been out since we handed over those mercenaries to the national guard."

"W-w-w-what?"

Jessica sat up from her position and poked me in the nose."Yeah, you've been out for a while now, so we just decided to move on with your unconscious body and look for the next member of our team."

Of course that made sense to Jessica, but I was still left in the dark. I looked out the windshield and saw a forests all around us and had no clue about US geography so I was more confused.

"What happened?"

Jessica cleared her throat and sat crisscross in the back of the van as it appeared that she was going to tell me what transpired while I was out.

"Once upon a time were two dwarfs and they loved each other very much, so..."

Suddenly the van lurched forward and Jessica went flying.

Miranda turned down the radio for a moment and turned to face me while we were stopped.

"Let me tell you what really happened before miss fairy tale goes off into wonderland. First off you fainted and scared the hell out of us. Then when we handed the mercs over to the soldiers Static flew off to Gotham for something league related. We packed you up into the van, and Temarius and Madison took the Ferrari. So Ever since we left the city Jessica has been bitch slapping you to wake you up which I told her wouldn't work."

From the crumpled mess of random objects that had been flung behind the drivers seat rose a single finger.

"You're wrong, I still woke him up while I was slapping all over his face."

Miranda just shook her head and took the van out of park.

"Fine, whatever, we need to catch up with Temarius and Madison, I think that they've lost track of us."

* * *

(**Up Ahead**)

The base was booming in the bright red Ferrari as it zoomed down the road. The roof was down and the lyrics could be heard flying out of the car.

(_Here we go back, this is the moment_

_Tonight is the night, we'll fight 'til it's over_

_So we put our hands up like the ceiling can't hold us_

_Like the ceiling can't hold us_

_Here we go back, this is the moment_

_Tonight is the night, we'll fight 'til it's over_

_So we put our hands up like the ceiling can't hold us_

_Like the ceiling can't hold us_).

Both Temarius and Madison's heads could be seen swaying back and forth with the beat, not even caring about the welcome sign that read,'Welcome to West Virginia: Wild and Wonderful.

* * *

**Light seeker, if you read the last few words you know what that means.**

**I'm sorry everybody for taking so long to post another chapter, but it's kinda hard when you have a summer class that takes up a lot of free time. I hope that I can update faster and get Red's Army together and soon withoudry grade dropping.**

**Anyways, I hope you liked the chapter and as always if you have any questions just shoot me private message, comment if you have a critique of the chapter or just say how awesome it is, either way. And I am still accepting characters, just check out the criteria in chapter one.**

**On another note...(I do not own Succubus, she belongs to the talented deviant artist shamanxphantom309, also I am not macklemore so I don't own the song referenced above)  
**

**Check her out!**


	11. The 'Iron' Giant Part 1

**Balls, I can't believe I squeezed a chapter out of my spare time.**

* * *

The rest of the ride into West Virginia was calmer than I expected it to be, of course Jessica was out like a lightbulb, so that explains it all. What didn't explain things was the fact that she had the scar that she had from my dream, or was it a dream? She also told me that she got while she was still in the field hospital, but instead of being attacked by an assassin sent by my father, it turned out to be a drugged up citizen that had gotten out of his restraints on his bed. The next thing that I had been waiting for was that woman from my dream to show up...that woman.

Her face struck something into me that no other woman had, fear. Poison Ivy, Harley Quinn, and Hitgirl to top it off didn't scare me like she did with those snake-like eyes of hers, that and the fact that she froze me in place. I felt helplessness around her and couldn't escape that feeling until I woke up. Normally you tell your teammates about something like this, but I can't let one simple dream undermine my position as a leader.

Anyways, Miranda kept me awake the whole way there with all of the information about our next recruit, "Iron John". From what I can see, Iron John doesn't know how he got his powers. When asked he just says, "I was born with them." Because of this, people in West Virgina believed that he was the descendant of the folk hero John Henry. He became Talcott, West Virgina's local hero when he started his hero work at the age of 15. His methods had little to no blood shedding, and he was adored by children.

At age 20, John's family, who were factory workers were threatened with bankruptcy when the factory faced foreclosure. To save the factory, he signed up to be a part of a genetic military project in DC that wanted to copy Superman's bulletproof body. There, he was the star pupil, and he acted as a mentor, a tutor and a hero whenever he would stop fights. He made no personal enemies, though he did make a few bullies. They usually ended up waist deep in the ground. The heads of the project, Dr. Alice Xavier, her husband, Frank and three other project members: Felicia, David and Cole, became John's closest friends. Soon, John became one of the successful ones, strong as Superman and almost as invincible as him. And his friends were successful too. After the project was complete, the remaining subjects (the ones that didn't make it either quit, or retired or were killed in accidents) were asked to be a part of the military fighting force. John was the only one who denied, saying he just wanted the money to save the family business. To his amazement, the heads of the project complied. His friends took the job, however, which meant that the four might never see each other. But they promised to be in touch.

He sounded like perfect Red's Army material to me, even though reports stated that he hadn't been seen outside of his home in a few weeks. No matter, we are on a mission and nothing will stop us!

(**A few minutes later...**)

You know when I said that nothing would stop us, well I stand corrected. Just as Temarius and Madison had gotten into town they were pulled over by a patrol officer, and they had been pulled over for some time come to find out. Twenty minutes earlier they had been a few miles ahead of us, and now they were standing outside of my Ferrari with a K-9 unit sniffing around my car.

'_I know that I didn't carry around any drugs around me or with me, so what was the big deal?_'

Just then it hit me...the special fuel that Doctor Fate showed to me a few days ago was still in the trunk, as well as my AK, Dragounov, RPD, and RPG. In other words we had to do something and fast before shit hit the fan and Madison and Temarius end up in hand cuffs. But what could be done? Once again my mind lit up and an idea came to mind. I was going to mess with the officer's head.

Reaching into my back pocket for my cell phone, I opened the main screen and turned on an app that Temarius had installed back in Michigan. This app gave me direct access to all of the Ferrari's functions, including the door to the trunk that his mutt was inspecting. I pressed the trunk icon on the screen and without warning it slammed shut, and made the dog jump backwards a few feet. When the officer tried to open it again I pressed the icon and gave him a nice whack on the bottom of his chin that made him fall flat on his fat ass. Madison got a nice laugh out of it, but Temarius quickly straightened her out and jabbed her in the side with his elbow. The dog started barking at the vehicle and the officer had now pulled out his sidearm. I had to end this before he called in for backup.

I pressed the last icon at the bottom which released a humongous smoke screen that spread out in a ten yard radius around the vehicle. Before I knew it I heard Temarius through my earpiece.

"Thanks Marcas."

"No problem, now lets all get to Alderson before it's too late to check in."

* * *

(**?**)

The sound of of ill-tempered stomping echoed throughout the halls of the temple and never ceased as they approached a sliding door. A fist pounded on the outside and the door opened.

"What can I do for you?" Asked Tearju.

The response from the other person was a slap to the face. Of course she had expected him to respond and soon, besides, Westbrook didn't like rookies stepping into his territory.

"You've got some nerve doing what you did to the master's boy. Don't you know that we're trying to remain incognito at the moment?"

Tearju rubbed the side of her face and smiled at the General,"Of course I do, I was just trying to remind him that we're still out there, and we're willing to kill his newfound friends."

Westbrook punched the wall right next to her, making a dent in it and pointed a finger,"Who do you think you are just doing that without orders, huh?"

"She actually was following orders General, you just didn't know it."

Westbrook turned around to see the Shadow Man standing behind him and saluted.

"Sir, how come you didn't inform me about this?"

The Shadow Man put his hands behind his back and grinned,"My fair general, don't you know that I don't have to tell you everything that goes on in the other branches of the order."

Just then a cold chill ran down Westbrook's spine,"You don't mean..."

His master nodded,"Yes, I've inducted miss Tearju here as a member of the temple of the Red Crosshairs, meaning that she doesn't fall under your jusrisdiction over the legion of the red crosshairs."

The General glanced at the woman that was now standing there with her hands on her hips. It looked like she was waiting for something, and in the pit of his stomach he knew what that thing was.

Bowing, but clenching his fists he said,"I'm sorry miss, I apologize."

"I accept your apology general, just remember that you're not the boss of me, ok?"

Westbrook looked her in the eyes and replied,"Yes, I understand that...but know this witch, I am a general, I command special forces that could kill you before you can wake up and scream, so don't you dare talk down to me."

With that said, he walked away and went back to his office where he would have a meeting with an ally from mount Olympus.

The Shadow Man turned his attention back to the sorceress and extended his hand,"Now that that's over with, what would you say about doing a special mission for me."

Succubus leaned against the door way and grabbed the tablet that he had and read it over.

"My dear, I have a plan for when Adrian loses to the Shadow Warriors, and I need your help with this. You see, I am in a partnership with him for now, but when the tables turn and he falls, I will need you to conduct this spell on him so that he will be more susceptible to my powers and eventually become my slave."

She read over a few more pages in the virtual notes and shook her head,"This spell is far too dangerous for me to use, I could die."

The Shadow Man weaves his finger like an parent would to a child,"Tsk, tsk, tsk, you don't understand my dear, you have no choice in the matter."

On her hand a pentagram appeared with a crosshair in the middle. A painful, burning sensation rippled throughout her nervous system and forced her to the ground. While she was down, he crouched to her level and ran his hand through her hair,"I guess this should be your lesson my dear, you don't make pacts with the devil."

* * *

(**Alderson, West Virginia, 12.3 miles from Talcott, WV**)

It didn't take us long to get to our hotel in the small town called Alderson. We actually had to go through where we were supposed to be the next day becuase the there were no places to stay there, in the matter of the fact, the town was so small that you could blink and miss it. How a legend of a man like this "Iron John" is staying there makes no sense to me. He could easily be accepted into the Justice League's ranks, but I guess he doesn't want to leave home, I know I wouldn't.

This time when we got into our hotel I already said that I wanted to rooming with Temarius, so that Jessica and Miranda can have more time together. I know that she pisses her off and I don't care, this is revenge.

While I was unloading my things I noticed Temarius tinkering with something on his side of the room. I couldn't tell what it was but it looked like something mechanical. I didn't really want to interfere with his work, rather pay attention to the bitch fest going on in the other room, hopefully they would pipe down before somebody called the cops.

After everything was said and done I buried my face in the pillows on my bed, even though I knew that they probably had some form of bacteria or disease in them. I was just about to fall asleep when Temarius woke me up.

"What is it." I said mumbling.

"I want you to meet me up on the roof with Jessica, I have something that can help her out."

I just buried my face back in the pillows and shooed him away,"Can't you give that to her without me up there?"

"No, you didn't let me finish. I also have something for you and the other members of the team as well."

This caught my attention,"Ok, I guess I can stay up for a little bit longer."

* * *

(**On the Roof**)

Jessica was already there waiting for us as giddy as she could be for it being two in the morning. I adjusted myself to the cool mountain breeze that was blowing over the rooftop and covered myself in the comforter from my bed, while Temarius was opening up the bag that he brought with him.

"So, what's inside?" asked Jessica.

Pulling his hand out he revealed a domino mask with lenses over the eye slits, and something with a hilt that I couldn't really describe. Jessica skimmed over the mask for a bit then put it on. The looke on her face while she stood there told it all.

"Holy crap," she said in shock,"I can see in the dark!"

Temarius grinned,"Yeah, and there's also thermal vision, and to top it off it comes with a hud system that tracks all of our communicators so that you know where we are."

'_Great, now she will always know where we are. Thanks Temarius._'

Then he showed her the trinkets that he brought with him, which upon showing in the light of the moon were two silver swords, except there was something peculiar about them. They looked like kitanas but oddly enough they each had a gun handle to hold it up with.

'_wait a minute..._'

"Do those swords have guns in them?" I asked.

Temarius nodded,"Yes sir, and they're sure to give whoever is in front of them a bad time."

Looking at Jessica's face I could see something glimmering, like water. Was she crying?

"This...this is the best gift that i've ever gotten." she said as she broke down and hugged Temarius.

"You're welcome."

She wiped the tears from her eyes and looked at the swords again thinking about something critical.

"So where do I holster these bad boys?" she asked smiling.

He pulled two sheathes out of the bag that he brought up and handed them to her.

"Problem solved?"

She nodded and put the swords away, carrying them at her side as she left.

"Did you give her any bullets for the guns?" I asked.

Temarius laughed,"Do you think that I would hand over loaded weapons to her knowing that Miranda is going to be in the same room?"

"Good point."

He reached back into his bag and pulled something else out that he handed to me and took out something similar,"So what are these?" I asked.

"Put them on your combat boots first, i'll guide you from there."

I did as he said and slipped them on without any trouble as he sat there and watched. I had to adjust the plates on the bottom to fit my shoe size, but I seemed to manage once I figured how to make it work. I was wondering what to do next until he pulled another one out of his bag.

"All right, the thing that you just put on your boot is a short burst manuverability system, or what I like to call the SBMS. This system isn't made for flight, but it is made specifically for covering great distances by foot, and dodging attacks. Let me show you."

Out of his bag, which I was starting to call a portal to another dimension, he pulled out part of his exoskeleton made for supporting his legs to help him stand up, and put them on.

"Since I have those boosters already installed on my exoskeleton, i'll go ahead and give you a demonstration on why the goons back in Detroit called me a monster."

A humming sound came from his feet, and the dust beneath him kicked up everywhere for a brief moment, causing him to disappear. I didn't know what to say until I felt something tap me on the shoulder. I looked to see what it was and saw Temarius standing there with his arms folded.

"How did you get behind me so fast?" I asked.

"It's simple, I hit the boost button and made it here."

I facepalmed for moment and sighed,"I mean how did you make it do that? Was it some kind of voice command or gesture?"

"Actually it was a sudden shift in weight to my side once I enabled them from my hud and all."

"Please explain this in English."

He walked over to me and handed me an ordinary looking analog watch, then pressed a button on it.

"Try it on. Your boosters should be active right now, and remember, the slightest shift in weight can cause you to go in that direction."

I tried what he said and leaned to my right and went flying to my right. Then I jumped backwards and to my amazement flipped backwards and landed right on my feet again. The boosters corrected themselves so I end up being like a cat, I would always land on my feet. Seeing the benefit that these things provided, I tried to boost my way up onto an air unit that was about a foot taller than me and flew right into it. I could hear Temarius laughing from the side and knew that I needed to show him that I could do this, so when a certain idea came to mind I decided to act on it.

Jumping onto the elevated patch of roof about ten feet away from the air unit I jumped off that and boosted off of some of the other things sticking out of the roof and made my way on top of it. I just basically did parkour, except I did it with booster rockets.

Temarius was obviously impressed and nodded in approval,"So what do you think?"

"How long until you can make pairs for Jessica and Madison?"

Temarius tapped his foot on the roof and thought for a moment,"Thinking about it, it would probably be until I can get more hands on more resources like the stuff that I had back home. Until then, you'll be the only one that has a pair of those...Oh, one more thing."

This time he didn't have to reach into his magical bag of scientific wonders and pulled a black beret out of his pocket and tossed it to me. Upon further inspection, the beret had white trimmings with a patch on the front bearing a red, white, and blue eagle on it and below it it said, 'libertas ominum'. It sounded Latin, which I was a little rusty in, but he explained it to me.

"Libertas Ominum, it means freedom for all."

Reaching out to him I reeled him in and gave him a spine crushing bear hug.

"Thank you my friend, I don't know how I can repay you."

"Well you can let me breathe for one thing."

"Oh, sorry."

Once I put him down he dusted himself off and cleared his throat,"Just to let you know I'm also working on projects for Madison and I'm looking into that injection vial with your friend's DNA in it."

"Great, now that that's all said and done, lets get some rest."

* * *

(**The Next Morning...**)

This time I woke up when I wanted to this time, instead of having somebody jumping up and down on me like a child. I got up, got dressed, and went downstairs to the lobby where a continental breakfast was being served, more like a smorgasbord of country dishes and the like that filled me up. The whole time that I had been eating I didn't see any of the others come downstairs to eat, of course it was almost eight o' clock when I woke up, or as the women around me referred to as the crack of dawn, whatever that meant.

Standing on the roof of the building I sent a text message to everybody to get up and join me as soon as they could so that we could get this day started and meet up with the next recruit. I was expecting a response saying '_we are on our way_', or '_we're ready when you are_', but all that I got were the birds that were making noise nearby. I was close to calling somebody in the girls room and wake everybody up, but I heard someone walking behind me. I turned to see who it was and saw Madison and the rest of the gang standing there.

"Why didn't you respond to my text?"

Madison looked at the rest of the groups and laughed,"That's because we were already up and looking for you."

"Oh"

"So where are we heading to now?" Asked Jessica.

I pulled the map that I got down in the lobby, out of my pocket, and showed a highlighted area on the map, not too far from Alderson. "Talcott, West Virginia, the home of American legend John Henry, and our next recruit Iron John."

A revving noise was heard from behind the group, and on the rooftop Jessica had brought her motorcycle. "Well what is everyone waiting for, let's go!"

She pushed the throttle down to the highest that it would go and zipped right off the rooftop Like a rocket. Madison went over to the ledge to see if Jessica had killed herself and found her on the roof of the neighboring building.

"Come on down, the water is fine!"

* * *

(**Talcott, WV**)

Before we had even left I had to turn down the stereos in the Ferrari because Madison and Temarius decided to turn it into the bass master, instead of my car. I can't help it if I have OCD, I just don't like loud, blaring music beating the shit out of my eardrums.

Looking around the town you could see that all the places around you were open, including a gift shop dedicated to the legend that put this Podunk town on the map, John Henry. Legend tells that Henry carried a twenty pound hammer that helped put together the tracks that run through West Virginia. He made immense progress until he faced modern ingenuity and challenged it to a duel. Surprisingly enough he won, but it was at the cost of his life that made him a legend. I guess that with Iron John, the people of this town can say that the legend lives on.

At the center of the town there was a large newly paves road with a large mailbox at the end that has the name,'_Bloomfield_' engraved on it. That was where we needed to be, so I directed everybody down the trail, hopefully finding the residents there, so that we wouldn't have to go on a wild goose chase.

* * *

(**Belle Reve Pentitentiary**)

One of the fiercest prisons on earth had just recieved two new inmates, Grant and Rose Wilson. The authorities, and the government had been trying for years to capture the spawns of Deathstroke and make the whole family rot away in prison for life, and their dreams were coming true. In the depths of this massive facility, the two Wilsons were being escorted by ten guards armed and armored to the teeth for protection.

Rose looked at her brother in disgust and kicked him in the knee as they walked to their cell,"You miserable bastard, you gave us up when we had a chance to kill those two."

Grant just kept his poker face going and followed the guards pace down the hall. Only he understood the purpose behind their surrender, his sister was just too pig-headed to realize it. When they stopped for a moment, two of the guards broke their formation and flashed key cards at the scanners in front of them and went back to their spots in the formation like clockwerk.

As they reached a large open area, Grant stopped for a moment and the whole formation stopped with him,"Excuse me guards, what happens when you choke a smurf? Does it turn blue or purple?"

The guards looked at each other sharing the thoughts going through their heads at the moment, which could only be described as,'uuuuuuh, what?'

Rose understood what he meant by that and lifted her arms over her head in the sickest way possible by taking her shoulders out of their sockets and putting them back in one by one. Grant did the same thing and grabbed one of the guards to his surprise. The other guards aimed their rifles at them and closed in on the two, who were now using the guard as a human shield.

"What now shit for brains?" said Rose.

Grant snatched something off of his hostage's neck and tossed it to Rose, quickly turning back to keep an eye on his encroaching enemies. When she scanned the card Grant snatched the rifle and snapped the guard's neck, running for the open door behind him. The guards weren't far behind, and the gunfire was catching up to his best attempts to dodge the flying lead. Like an unbelievable action movie, he made it through the doors without a scratch and locked them behind him.

Through the huffing, Grant pointed to a cell down the hall and said,"Our prize is just down the hall. Just use the same card that you used to open the door."

Rose nodded and ran down the hall to see what was lying behind door number one, after all they were just put in one of the most impenetrable and unescapable prisons on the planet. Standing in front of the door, she swiped the key card over the reader and a click was heard. Once the door slipped open, a sight that she hadn't seen in long time stood right in front of her with his hands behind his back.

"F-f-f-f-father?"

Slade huffed,"Hmm, this is a surprise."

Rose balled her fist up and ran at her father with a punch in mind and he dodged it. Once she had fallen on the ground, he put his foot on her back and laughed,"Still the same old Rose, you could never defeat me, even if I was blindfolded."

"And right now you're permanently blind." she said.

"Temporarily blinded." Grant corrected from the doorway.

Slade turned his head as if he still had his eyes and faced his son,"So you actually came to save me?"

Grant held the rifle up and fired a round at the cuffs that he had around his wrists then eventually at the ones on his aimed down the sights of his rifle and shot off Rose's restraints while she was still on the ground.

"You could say that." he said as he helped her up.

Rose looked between the two and watched as he handed the blind man the rifle.

"Why?" he asked.

"Because, my client has been taken advantage of by a man known as the Shadow Man, and by my knowledge you've worked with him in the past."

Immediately Slade walked out of the room reloading the rifle on his way out. Both children couldn't understand how the man could even know where to go, but it was Slade Wilson that they were talking about, a man full of surprises. He looked both ways even though he didn't have eyes to see with and headed to the other end of the hall where there was a janitors station. Using his strength he pried the rusted door off it's hinges and grabbed a few things off the shelves inside.

"Watch and learn kids, your old man is about to give you a lesson in chemistry."

He guided them to an empty tell that faced outside the prison where he started pouring chemicals into a small tub and pushed it under the window. Five seconds later and the tub exploded into a ball of fire, and a rush of fresh air swept in.

"Come on," Slade said as he pointed towards the hole,"times wasting! We've got a shadow warrior to find and we've got a shadow man to kill."

* * *

(**Talcott, WV**)

When we drove out in the woods I expected to see some huge mansion out here by the fame and notoriety that Iron John had, but what we all saw was a small, humbling, cabin in the woods. The better part were the people that greeted us, the Bloomfields, two parents with an extraordinary child. While we were there we asked where we could find John and they told us that he was out back building something. So I sent Madison to go and get him, and she didn't come back. I got worried and brought my whole team with me and was shocked at the sight that stood before me, carving a small tree into something that hadn't really taken shape yet.

He looked like he was at peace with himself, but I was far from it. From the description that Miranda had given me, I had no knowledge that our next recruit was going to be twelve feet tall and somewhere around 2,400 pounds. As I stood there I wondered,'_Just how in the hell are we going to get this man around?_'

While I was thinking things out in my head, the rest of Red's Army was already over there talking to him.

"Wow, you're huge!" Said Jessica with her arms out wide.

John laughed it off and slapped his knee,"Thats what everybody tells me when they take a single glance at me. You know a lot of people come down to little old Talcott just to come here and visit Iron John." He said with another hearty laugh.

"So what do you do around here John? Other than carving trees." Said Temarius.

John rubbed his head and laid back in the massive throne that he had built out of a couple of local plants and breathed a sigh,"Nothing much really. It's been real quiet ever since the challengers stopped coming here to challenge me."

'_Now that raises a question_' I thought as I started to become part of the group around him.

"And what was this challenge that they challenged you at?" I asked out of curiosity.

The giant had opened his mouth to speak when suddenly there were sounds of explosions coming out of the town. Me and the rest of the team looked to see what it was and saw a few things hovering in the air with ropes dropping off the sides. I used my crosshairs to see if I could find any identification on any of the vehicles and saw the familiar symbol of the order of the red crosshairs. I gave the signal and Temarius went ahead with Jessica hanging on to him and Madison following in pursuit.

John couldn't make heads or tales of what was going on and looked down at me. "What's going on?"

"My father...you see, we came here not to visit you or challenge John. We came here specifically to recruit you into the team that I'm building so that we can take down the man that's responsible for this attack and many other wrong things in this world. This attack is his response to me wanting to recruit you."

John looked out at the destruction unfolding and nodded his head,"I might just join you after this since there was really nothing to do, but right now..." He said as he picked up the mighty hammer that sat beside his chair,"lets go save a small town."

* * *

**To be continued...**

**p.s. I'm still open for OCs, just look at the criteria in chapter one.**


	12. The 'iron' giant part 2

**The wait for weekly chapters will soon be over! I take my final later this week which will mean the end to my summer class, so wish me the best of luck.**

* * *

(**Hours Earlier at the Hall of Justice...**)

While all was still dark in the hall of justice, a figure made their way through a path that they had traveled through just a little over a year ago. This time they weren't there to install the Deathstroke program like they did that time, they were actually more concerned with finding the hidden storage facility that the league had underneath the hall. The shadow crawled their way through the ducts that went right over the guard post there, and this time there want the ordinary guard. From what they memorized from the list of leaguers, this one was on the lower wrung of recognition in the league.

'_The Crimson Avenger of all people. It looks like this mission is going to be a walk in the park._' They thought as they made their way over the checkpoint.

After breaking through 5 inches of concrete without making so much as a peep, they dropped into the vault that held many things that the league had confiscated throught their battles and travels. There were boom tubes from Darkseid's failed invasions, scarab technology from the reach, a nuclear device with a clowns face on it, and one of the two things that this thief had come for, the device that opened a portal to the phantom zone. Immediately the figure pressed into their ear and a portal appeared. Out of it came rift with an exact copy of it. Grabbing the fake, the shadow effortlessly switched the two out and handed the real one to the man behind them.

The portal disappeared and the final object was not to far down the hall from the kryptonian device. Just earlier the leader of the legion of the red crosshairs made a trip to Olympus to discover the location of the deadly suit of armor only known as the annihilator.

...

* * *

(**Earlier than hours earlier on mount Olympus...**)

The portal quickly closed behind Westbrook, he wanted to be in land out of this place as fast as possible, being that he was thousands of feet above themyscira, the home of the amazons and Wonder Woman.

"Ares..."

The towering armored figure stood up and stared down at the well-decorated soldier below him and laughed,"Well if it isn't Martin's war hound."

Westbrook held his hand up and stood straight in the prescence of the being in front of him, even though he was intimidating.

"Ares we need to cut out the chatter, I need to know..."

He paused in mid sentence as Ares' eyes started glowing red with rage,"What is so needed to be immediately known to you that you address me in the context of such peasantry? Do you not know who I am?!"

The general knew exactly who Ares was and didn't want to piss him off, but he needed to know where the armor that he had crafted for him went off to. His mind was telling him that his master already knew where it was, he was just waiting for Westbrook to his job. So instead of continuing his sentence like he wanted he to he kneeled and bowed before Ares in order to save his life and make things move faster than they were.

Ares saw the gesture and smiled,"You may rise knave and ask about what you were asking of me earlier."

"Mighty Ares, I come before you to ask of the whereabouts of the suit of armor that you requested to be built, the armor that faced the justice league and gave them a fight. I am talking about the annihilator."

The great being scratched his chin and glanced at the skies above him then looked at the ground below.

"I believe that you may need to enter the wasps nest in order to retrieve my precious suit."

Westbrook thought about it for a moment then found out what he was talking about, the hall of justice. He had already dispatched a spy to hide amongst the league and gather information, so this would be an easy job, even if it involved getting into the more secure part of the hall underground. The general humbly bowed before Ares before a portal spawned behind him and closed as he walked through.

* * *

(**?...**)

The annihilator was larger than expected, so a few extra agents were brought in and when that failed they resorted to the only way to get it moved, violence. All it took was a simple punch to somebody's face and the dusty statue came to life. Then it followed the group through the portal and into the massive throneroom that belonged to none other than the Shadow Man.

Sitting on the throne he enjoyed seeing the sight of the giganic suit of armor walk into the room, a plan that came together. The suit stopped for a moment to observe it's surroundings before it looked at the person sitting down the hall from it, then it suddenly stopped. The Shadow Man stood up from his throne and clapped,"Well done my minions, you've done your job and you've done it well...NOW LEAVE!"

Without taking another second the team surrounding the mech and the phantom zone generator ran out of the room and shut the doors behind them While their master admired their work. The first thing that he did was pick up the only gateway on earth to the phantom zone and grinned,"Inside the phantom zone lie more than a few beings that rival the power of the man of steel. With these people at my disposal I think that destroying the justice league will be much easier, as well as the 'team' that my son is gathering." He walked around for a moment before he put down the device in his hands and looked up at the suit of armor standing at where it had exited the portal.

'_This will come in handy very soon, all I need is for someone to move this onto a drop ship for deployment._'

* * *

(**Current Time, Talcott, WV**)

Of all the things that my father had done, this here was low. Dakota was way bigger than this, and came prepared for what happened, but this small town had been caught off guard. People were trying to find shelter, but that was all getting decimated by a tall, hulking robot on the other side of town. Drop ships flew overhead and dropped off squads of heavily armed and armored troops, wearing and using gear that didn't seem to fit the era. Gargoyle swooped in every now and then and picked up running civilians, dropping them off in Alderson while we got ready for the fight. Subzero looking at Skewer saw the upgrades that she got for the first time and frowned,"Why don't I get any of the cool stuff?"

"That's becuase I haven't made it yet!" blared Gargoyle over the radio.

As soon as we got into town, Gargoyle was getting two more people out of a car by the road when the robot lifted it's hands to smash him. Nobody could reach him or the vehicle in time, except for the log that was thrown over our heads that slammed into the back of the thing. We all looked back to see Iron John carrying his giant hammer as he ran at the dazed robot. Gargoyle quickly grabbed the people out of the car and flew off somewhere safer to drop them off.

While this was all going on, the footsoldiers were focusing their fire on the little people, being us, while John was duking it out with the robot. I took cover by a flipped over tractor trailer while skewer hid behind a barrier that subzero had made from a busted fire hydrant. I popped out of cover and fired a few shots at the soldiers while they scrambled for someplace to hide, and here I thought that these guys would be professionals. To my right I saw two squads focusing their fire on something. When I looked to see what it was I saw a solid wall of ice moving towards the guards, with skewer taking potshots along the way at the soldiers out in the open.

'_Now is my chance._' I thought as I saw the other squad that was focusing on me now firing on the ice wall that Subzero had made.

With the opportunity, I jumped out of cover and opened fire on the guys in front of me, they didn't stand a chance. I quickly mowed down the squad that had me pinned down and used the booster system that I got last night to boost my way over to Subzero and Skewer.

"Can't you make this wall move any faster!" yelled skewer while she loaded ammunition into her gunswords.

Zero held out a hand that she wasn't using to hold up the wall at the moment, absorbed the flow of water coming out of the fire hydrant, then dumped it all on an unsuspecting Skewer who was freaking out from the sudden rush of water.

"What are you doing?"

All of a sudden Jessica felt really cold, ice cold. The water that had covered her body was forming a protective layer over her like body armor, and Madison was providing the plating for her. Once she had finished, Skewer was standing in a suit of armor made of ice.

"You wanted to move faster, you got it. Sick em'." she said as she pointed in front of her.

Skewer rolled up her sleeves, and ran at the guards as fast as she could. The poor squad didn't know what to do because their bullets were only chipping off her armor in bits. Then when she got close enough she yelled,"LEEEROOOOOY JENNNNKINS!"

The soldiers tried fighting back with the weapons that they had, but ended up getting sliced, diced, and chopped by her twin swords that she was carrying. One of the soldiers, that had somebody on his side, was lucky enough to get away from death by gunswords and ran into the nearest house to hide. While this was all going on I finally caught up with the group to see what they had done and stood there watching Jessica play baseball with one of the heads of the soldiers that she had slash-chopped.

"Jessica steps up to the home plate. She gets ready to let 'er rip with one of her famous hard hitting swings. The ball comes out and...IT'S A HOME RUN!" she yells as she smacks the head through a nearby window.

"JESSICA!" yelled Subzero.

"What?" she said as she scratched her head.

"Was that necessary?" Zero said while holding her hand over he mouth.

Skewer looked at what of the soldiers below her and picked up another head,"Yeah, you wanna try?"

Madison couldn't take what she was seeing and ran over behind a car turned on it's side and let go all that she had for breakfast while I smacked the head out of Jessica's hand.

"Now why did you do that?" she asked.

"Becuase, it's disgusting." I replied.

Out of the sky, Gargoyle touched down right next to us and waved. "Hey, how's it...oh my God." he said when he looked at the mess at Skewer's feet.

"Aw come on guys, it's just a bunch of people...well they were people" she said as she took a step back.

Madison walked back over to the group again and nearly passed out where she was standing.

"What's wrong with you?" I asked

She pointed over at Jessica and shook her head,"I didn't expect her to go all iron chef on these guys."

Skewer shrugged her shoulders and grinned,"What else would you expect with someone like me, with blades like these?" she said pointing to the gunswords holstered on her back.

I was about to add my five cents when a tractor flew into the building behind us and sent it to the ground. Like clockwork we all looked at the fight that had been progressively moving farther and farther away from us, but could be seen from the town with the amount of trees falling.

"Do you think he needs help?" asked subzero.

I shook my head,"No, I think that he can handle it."

* * *

(**2 miles away**)

He gave another swing to the robot's head and made it take a few steps back and followed that up with a sweep of its feet and sent falling down, again. Usually his hammer would have brought anybody or anything down by this time, but whatever the robot was made of must be resistant to hundreds of pounds of force. The worst part was that it seemed that with every hit and strike, the metal monstrosity would just get stronger and when an opening came John was given a pounding. Lucky for him he has the bones of steel like superman, otherwise he would have been like the past few times before, the robot got up again and stomped on over to him, this fight it seemed was getting out of hand. Although John had the ability to take hit after hit from this guy, he was still human, though the robot said otherwise.

In a short matter of seconds, the robot had closed the gap between the two and gave him a heavy punches to the jaw which sent him 50 yards away through the trees. After hitting the last pine tree he stood up to try and fight back but the robot had run somewhere else. Using one of the trees closest to him he climbed all the way to the top to spot the thing and where it was going and saw a trail forming it's way back into town. He had to stop this thing before it hurt anyone or...his parents.

* * *

(**Back in town**)

The streets shook, and loose power lines fell all around us as the robot came back into town, rather through what was left of it. Subzero had tried to freeze the thing in place, but how do you stop something that's as heavy as a train engine running fifty miles an hour? You don't do that because that would be suicide, that and if John didn't come out first then there was something wrong. For some reason we decided to follow it through the woods to see what it was doing and saw it running towards John's home. I looked over at gargoyle and yelled,"Did you get them out?"

He shook his head an replied,"No, but I'm on it!"

Using his thrusters he bolted into the building and grabbed the two that were hiding in a hall closet then bolted out. He only had a few seconds to spare too because the lumbering giant ran straight through the house and stopped. It looked nearby and grabbed a log that was sitting behind the cabin and threw it like a javelin at gargoyle, but he missed. Something was telling me that he was after John's parents, and for what reason, I don't know.

Suddenly the ground started shaking again and John came sprinting out of the woods behind us. Throwing his weight in front of him he stretched out his hands and tackled the robot to the ground. The sheer impact of the two caused a few trees to shake and brought down what was left of the house, this was a slower struggle. Iron John had the strength to match the machine's but the machine seemed to be getting stronger as the fight went on. This didn'suit well with me.

'_There has to be some way to end this._' I thought as John picked up the robot and body slammed him on the ground.

Trees can't stop this thing, John's hammer wasn't doing any damage, and of all things John himself was running out of energy. After a missed hammer strike went straight into the ground the robot delivered a punch to John's abdomen then brought both of his fists down on his head. His face made a crater in the soft earth beneath him and we all fell on our asses when the shockwave came.

"We need to do something!" Yelled Subzero, "John is getting his butt handed to him!"

Again I was in one of those situations, like I was back when I was in Gotham and back when I was in captivity. There was nowhere to go and nothing to do but sit and watch as the powerhouse that was Iron John didn't get up from the curb stomping of epic proportions that he was being given. Everybody was yelling at me and I couldn't figure out what to do, what leader I was.

Back when I was with Leonid, even for the short time that he taught me something...

(_Flashback_)

_"Oleg, I made a mistake!" I yelled._

_The older man put down what he was doing to come to the front door to see what the problem was and wrapped an arm around me._

_"What's the matter Marcas?" He said calmly._

_"I didn't know that I was supposed to make deliveries today and walked out! I just now got a call from my boss telling me that he wants to see me, I could lose my job!"_

_The old man pulled out a stool from the island that sat in the middle of the kitchen and sat me down in it while he got his own. Like he usually did he scratched his beard and nodded his head, then he 'hmmed' on cue and stopped everything._

_"I can't help you exactly, but I do know someone that you can talk to."_

_I looked around the room thinking that there was someone else there and shook my head,"Who are you talking about?"_

_He pointed to my room and said,"Go in there, close the door, get on your knees and talk to God. I may be able to give you advice, but where would the forgiveness be? You see, he oversees everything and everyone, so why not ask for forgiveness from him?"_

_I had never thought about it before becuase I had never thought of praying to God. I had found no reason to because I had worshiped the Justice League for so long, not as gods, but as higher powers that could do anything, that and training taught me to strip away all the morals that could hold me back from doing my mission. I had no reason to do what Oleg had asked, and I could've just as easily taken his advice and faced the music the next day, but Oleg had his reasons for everything so I did as he told me to._

_(The present)_

Any of us could have probably moved in to stop the robot that was beating John to death, and during my flashback they did, and now they were all lying in the dirt around me, battered and bruised. Out of my time of need I fell on my knees and started speaking,"Please, Please we need help! John needs your help, I NEED YOUR HELP!"

I waited a few moments for something to happen and nothing happened. The robot that was beating on John pried the hammer out of his hand and held it over it's head, raising it like a golfer would behind it's back. I finally told myself to do something stupid and attack the machine before it smashed John's head in, so I pulled out my desert eagles and charged it while unloading both magazines.

"GET AWAY FROM HIM YOU GIANT METAL FREAK!"

Then a voice came from behind me..

"STOP!"

In mid-run I stopped what I was doing and turned to see who just said that and saw no more than three leaguers standing behind me. Hawk, Dove, and Green Arrow were helping my teammates up while I stood still.

Dove held out his hand and pointed to the ground,"Drop your weapons Marcas, trust me."

I looked back at the robot that was about to swing the hammer into John's head and did as he asked. What shocked me was what the robot did following that. It dropped John's hammer and stood in place like a statue while skewer walked up to it.

"Why did it just stop like that?" I asked.

Dove came over to where I was at and pointed to it,"I've fought that thing before and know that it feeds off of violence. It needs to be brought back to Washington D.C. to be put in a more secure area."

Suddenly a flash of blue light appeared behind us and black canary was there.

"No, it doesn't need to be anywhere near us or any place that it could harm people." She said as she walked over to the suit of armor.

"This needs to be taken to themyscira where no one can reach it."

I crossed my arms at her statement and scoffed, "And what makes you think that it will be safe there if it is not safe in the hall of justice?"

Dinah looked at me with her hands at her hips and gave me the look of a warrior,"Marcas, I'm sure that whoever attacked this town and brought the annihilator here doesn't know about themyscira."

"Really? Then how did they know of the location of the annihilator in the first place? Because I remember going through the league's logs and know that the original members, and your friend Ares know of the suits location."

Dinah flinched a little bit but she still didn't drop her '_I'm Black Canary so bite me' _demeanor.

"I'm not going to stand here and argue with you Marcas, I need to get back to Gotham and deal with the situation there."

"What's going on in Gotham?" I asked

"It's none of your concern Marcas."

I stomped my way over to her and got in her face, which was something that she wasn't expecting.

"It is my concern when I have friends there!"

"You heard the lady Ivan, it's league business!" Yelled arrow from the side.

"What did you just call me?" I said as I aimed one of my desert eagles at his face.

He walked over to me with his bow in hand, shoved my gun away and said,"Ivan, now go over and help your little friends over there."

Using my other hand I smacked the side of his head with a nice little **WHACK **that sent him to the ground. Canary ran over to him to help him back up while Skewer dropped everything that she was doing to stop us from getting into an all out brawl.

"I was just asking her a simple question you green wearing, fake-ass Robin Hood!" I yelled.

Dinah was rubbing the side of his face where I had hit and just shook his head. He showed no signs of smile or anything, rather remorse.

"I guess I know why you left." He said, pushing himself up.

"What?" I spat.

He looked at Canary whim had a worried look on her face, as if he was about to say something that would set me off. I knew that green arrow was a pacifist, so his response would be something that would try to calm me down, but I don't think that it would work.

"You still haven't learned how to control your anger, even if you stayed a while with doctor fate that can't heal you."

I shrugged off Jessica's grip that she had on me and said,"What do you mean, I'm perfectly normal now?"

"I wouldn't say so. Batman played back the footage from the hospital when Deathstroke assaulted Gotham, and I can vouch for him when he said that it reminded him of when you fought the flash and when you almost shot superman. You still have the same ferocity."

By now the rest of team were around us and they had looks of surprise.

"You didn't tell me that you tried to kill superman!" yelled Subzero.

"You just told me about the flash Marcas, damn!" Followed Gargoyle.

Then I felt someone pat me on the back and said,"And I thought that I was crazy."

I looked at my team and right now they weren't very happy with the news that they had just received, except for Skewer who was just shaking her head. I never did give any of them that part of the story for fear that they would reject me, which I could guess from the stares they were doing right now.

"I'm sorry I didn't tell you guys about that. I just thought that you all would reject me and not even think about joining the team if I said that. Superman is an icon and if I was widely known as the man that almost killed him then I wouldn't even be considered one of the 'good guys'." I said bowing my head.

Suddenly I felt a hand on my shoulder and I tensed up. I looked behind me, then looked up at the towering figure that was Iron John. He had a smile on his face for what reason I don't know, but the rest of the group was catching on.

"Annnnnnnd why is everybody suddenly smiling?" I asked.

John gave a hearty laugh then slapped his knee,"They're just messing with you Marcas, everybody knows about what happened between you and superman."

I wasn't an owl, but right now my eyes were as wide as the tires on my car.

"What?"

Gargoyle smacked me on the back and laughed,"Man it was all over the news, I mean he did have a press conference after all."

"When did this happen?!" I asked.

"Just two days after you repaired the front windows of the hall. He wanted to explain what happened to the public, though he didn't talk about hiding Deathstroke from you." Said canary.

'_That was when I was with fate._' I thought.

"In other words he went out on a limb to damage the league's reputation in order to save this guy's sorry butt." Said hawk.

Dove punched his brother in the shoulder and said,"No, he told the truth so that he wouldn't have to later on and make the people that we protect doubt why we're here. Now come on."

The leaguers stood by the suit of armor and teleported out of sight. Everything was calm now, but yet something was amiss. Something inside of me felt wrong, and when arrow brought up what he did it made me remember that night at the hospital and more. It seemed that whatever fate had done to me was undone by what the shadow man, the man that claimed to be my father, sent to me. I don't know what would happen next, but I would have to be ready for what he throws at me next.

* * *

**To be continued...****.**

**Also for you readers out there, here is Iron John's profile.**

NAME(HERO NAME): Iron John

ALIAS(CIVILIAN NAME): John Bloomfield

SEX: Male

HEIGHT: 12 feet

WEIGHT: At least 4000 pounds

EYE COLOR: Brown

NATIONALITY(U.S., China, etc.): African-American

PLANET and SPECIES(If they are an alien): Earth Human

POWERS/ABILITIES: Herculean strength and bullet, knife, missile and bomb-proof skin. And he has a giant sledgehammer

WEAKNESS(ES): Fire, magic, and anything more powerful than the weapons listed above. And his temper if it's not under control as usual.

WARDROBE(CIVILIAN/HERO): Civilian: simple jeans, black boots and a white shirt. Hero: Same. He's already well known in his state, so he doesn't need a costume.

VEHICLES(IF YOU HAVE ONE): An RV which is really an arsenal on wheels


	13. S! went down in DC

**Sorry for the wait people. School started up again.**

**Discalimer: I don't own DC Comics.**

* * *

Footsteps traveled down the hallway of the order's hideout. General Westbrook was confused. His master, the Shadow Man had not only sent the powerful weapon that was the annihilator out into battle and lost it, but he also threatened a deadly partner in crime, Adrian. Guards moved out of his way as he barged into the throne room/command center and pointed a gloved finger at his boss."Sir, I know that i'm not supposed to question your authority, but, for what reason are you doing what you are doing?"

The Shadow Man looked down at his disciple from the progress report that he had been reading on a tablet. He flicked his wrist like a command and ordered everybody to leave the room. Once the doors had closed he motioned for Westbrook to come closer.

"My fair general, in this instance it is ok to ask a question or two. You see, my purpose is to do many things, many that might not make sense to you now, but they will after I have explained it to you."

Westbrook, out of inpatience and at the same time servitude kneeled before his master and said,"Please, continue."

"After the annihilator had been here for a while, I decided to remove the specialized seal that had been put on it by the leaguer that goes by the name of zatanna. I found a way to control the suit with telepathy, the only thing is I needed our local magician Tearju to give me access since I do despise the effort in using magic. As you should know, the league will not place it on themyscira where it belongs, instead they will send it to the phantom zone where it will permanently stay..."

"But we have the only device on earth that can get there, how is this going to fold out?" Westbrook asked.

"My friend, we have already put it back in it's place. The only thing is that we now have the ability to open and close it as we please, and with Tearju's spell I can send my soul out to occupy the suit as another villain once did."

The tension in the room was slowly building, and all could feel it. The Shadow Man was about to get to the point that he had been waiting to say for quite some time.

"Once my soul occupies the suit, I will enter the phantom zone and acquire the attention of none other than General Zod, the man that can match the man of steel, and the being that will be eternally grateful for his freedom."

This made the general uneasy. '_Am I going to be replaced?_' he thought as he kneeled there.

"Do not worry general, Zod will not replace you. You are irreplaceable, and compared to Zod, you actually have some restraint. Zod will only be here because I do not currently have an agent in the field that can go toe to toe with Superman."

"And what of Zod's accomplices that he brought with him?" said a feminine voice from behind.

The general looked behind him and saw somebody that resembled a giant bee with the slender form of a woman, and some features that looked almost human. Westbrook scratched his head at the being walking towards him and looked back at his master.

"Let me guess, this is another freak to add to the team that you are building." Westbrook said with disgust.

The feeling quickly changed when he felt something sharp between his legs.

"Ah yes, this is sophie, the latest edition to the team. I can say that she has quickly become quite fond of you General."

The sharp object retracted and the being that stood behind him stood right next to the throne.

"And where did this one come from?" the general asked without much enthusiasm.

"Oddly enough she hails a few systems away from where Krypton once orbited."

He couldn't help but look at the creature that stood before him and sigh.

"And why did she come here?"

The alien pressed a claw to her neck and pressed a device that was attached to it. Westbrook was left puzzled until sound started coming out of the device. It was a translator.

"I came here because my planet was destroyed by debris that had traveled through dark space, and because the merchant that I bought my ship from directed me to this planet before its people had even made a trip to it's local moon."

The Shadow Man looked between the two and smiled,"Also, she enjoys many of the comforts that come all the way back from the roaring twenties. She really does enjoy classic human culture like me."

"Well then I guess that she will fit in." the general stated as he rubbed the back of his head.

"And the best part is that she has been reallocated to the legion of the red crosshairs, in other words she is under your command."

'_Now this is something that I like._' the general thought as he looked up and down at his newest recruit.

"Ok, if that is so then I will need her to go through the medical wing and be checked out for any extraterrerestrial diseases, then do a diagnostic examination to see what capabilites you have and how we can boost your potential. Is this clear?" he yelled in a commanding voice.

The bug woman spoke through the device around her neck and replied,"Yes, I understand."

* * *

(**_S_tar Labs Facility #1, Washington D.C.**)

After the fight in West Virginia we finally decided to get around to the vial that had almost gotten me and Miranda killed. Thankfully Temarius' father was in good terms with the CEO after removing tumor from his brain, saving his life. It seemed odd being back in the same town where I joined and left the Justice League. It brings back memories of the short time that I had been there and the time that I had left. I was glad that the lab wasn't anywhere near the hall of justice, or else I would probably have an episode, an episode of flashbacks that is.

When we arrived, we couldn't find a parking spot big enough for John's specialized RV which looked like a tractor trailer from a distance. He told us to go in while he drove around for a bit, so we went in.

Immediately Temarius got on the cloesest microscope and scanned away. While he was doing that, Jessica got the bright idea that mixing chemicals would be fun, and started mixing random shit together. Madison saw what was going on from the corner of her eye and walked over to the would-be scientist and started snatching test tubes out of Jessica's hands.

"What are you doing?" Jessica whispered.

"I'm stopping you from blowing up the whole freaking place!" Madison whispered loudly.

"This isn't going to blow up anything, it's just kool-aid and salt."

Madison looked at the containers that she was talking about and saw the skull and crossbones on their sides.

"Uuuum, that probably isn't kool-aid."

Jessica just shrugged Madison off and mixed the two chemicals together. A plume of purple smoke flew out of the glass container and covered the two. I saw what had just happened and ran over to the closet that had the hazmat suits and pulled out one for Temarius and myself. Before I could pull the other two out for Jessica and Madison, a hand reached out of the purple fog and grabbed my ankle.

"Marcas, when did you have a twin?" said Madison with a stupid grin on her face.

"What the hell did you mix up?" I asked as I slipped on the suit.

"Marcas, my colleague is asking an important question." said a gruff but familiar voice.

I looked to see who it was and saw Jessica sitting there with a mustache on her face. Women are not supposed to have mustaches, and this was just the beginning. Suddenly Madison let one rip and an orange cloud came out. Jessica sniffed the air and scratched her chin as if she was thinking about it.

"Hmm, I must say that smell is quite familiar. I do say, that smell originates from the oranges native to Florida! My fair lass, have you ingested any oranges as of late?"

Madison looked over at her at her equally messed up friend with a shit-eating grin and laughed.

"Yup, and that's not the best part."

Madison beat on her chest a few times and sat up for a moment. Then with a thunderous growling noise working it's way down her body, the sound of a foghorn came out of her butt, followed by a chain of a few others. By now I wasn't as worried as much as I was about to pee in my hazmat suit. Funny enough, Temarius kept his cool and continued to examine the sample under the scope.

Hilarity ensued and five minutes later the genius had printed out a complete report on his findings. While I got to read through the details, he got to help out the nut cases that I had been monitoring this whole time, and hadn't even stopped what they had been doing.

Reading through the report, I found that Temarius had discovered the one link in Shadow's DNA that gave him his powers, and that it wasn't originally there, Meaning that it wasn't an inherited trait. I remember him talking about the chemical that he had used to give him his powers and wondered if I could make one for my own, but knew that it was too complex. So these notes have shown me something incredible that I could never have done before. I now know how to make his prized adonis formula, the only problem is that the side effects could be unpredictable.

Temarius was very thorough with his research, even with miss farts a lot and the mustachioed scholar sitting on the counter behind me. He detailed all possibilities that could come out of making a copy of the formula and all led to unknown paths. In other words, one person could get invisibility while the other can fly. It would be a gamble with superpowers, and seemed foolish to even attempt, but since we might run into people without powers it could be useful; Hopefully nobody gets the super farts, the worst power to have.

* * *

(**Gotham 10 hours later...**)

Slade Wilson swore that he would never step foot in Gotham again after what had transpired almost a week ago, but this time he would have to make an exception. After his offspring busted him out of Belle Reeve, he made the decision that he was going to retrace his steps and hunt down the man that got him in prison in the first place, the Shadow Man. The first place to start this of all places was where he had been earlier, Gotham City.

Oddly enough the city seemed to be quiet for once, and by that he means there are no signs of super heroes anywhere. He would have expected the Warriors or Batman to have graced his prescience by then, but there was no such luck. Finally he made it to the warehouse where it was all planned out by the docks and kicked down the rusted metal door. What he found, rather didn't find, was anything left behind.

'_So it seems that the Shadow Man's cronies know how to clean up after themselves._' he thought as he scanned the room.

Slowly his patience was running thin, and his specialized multi-scanner wasn't picking anything up. All were showing nothing on the screen except for the movement radar which suddenly started to ping. The blip that had appeared was on the other side of the warehouse as it appeared on the screen, and Deathstroke knew what to do. He calmed his breathing down and turned up the frequency tuner on his helmet to pick up sounds from longer distances and pulled out the smaller ninjato that he had stashed at his side. The Blip was moving fast, but it wasn't moving forward, more like it was stalking him, waiting for the right time to strike. Then just as it had appeared it disappeared.

A chill went down Deathstroke's spine as he crouched there, ninjato in hand.

'_Where the hell did you go?_' he thought to himself.

Then the blip came back on the radar, the only thing was that the blip was right on top of him, so without a second to spare he turned around as fast as he could and went to slice his random attacker but stopped in mid swing, for some reason he couldn't explain. Standing before him was a woman with flowing red hair, white robes, and gold armor. She had her hand held up like an officer would to tell somebody to stop their car and held it there.

Slade was in awe of the one that stood before him because she was so beautiful, and yet she was holding him in the air as if he was as light as a feather. In a single motion she slowly put Slade back on earth and allowed him to move freely.

"Deathstroke the Terminator..."

Slade looked up at the woman and pointed his sword at her, "That's me woman, now who are you?"

"Would you believe me if I told you that I am Marcas' mother?"

"Uhhhhh, what?" said Slade as he dropped his sword.

She nodded, "Yes, I am his mother."

He couldn't believe a word that was coming out of the woman's mouth and yet he could, but he didn't understand the glow that was about her. Deep inside what she said felt like the truth, even though it really didn't to him. Just a few seconds ago he was on edge and now he felt calmer than he had ever been.

"But, but he said that you had died in all the interviews that we had. How are you standing here now?"

A sweet smile appeared on her face as she handed him a black book with only one feature that stood out, a red crosshair on the binding. Slade flipped through some of the pages to see what it was about and only saw blank pages staring back at him. He shook his head at the thing as he said, "What is this book? It doesn't have any pages!"

"As old as you are Slade Wilson, I thought that you would have known about the old saying."

Slade looked back down at the book and flipped through it again and scoffed,"What do you mean?"

A gust of wind came through the warehouse suddenly, and without another word the woman had disappeared. The wind came again, this time making a barely audible noise that sounded like words. He listened again to hear it and briefly heard,"Seeing is not always believing."

A chill ran down the mercenaries spine as he stood there.

...

...

...

"My God, she was an angel."

His thoughts stopped for a moment when the radio in his helmet came alive with the sound of his son coming through the earpiece. "Find anything on your end?"

Deathstroke paused for a moment then replied, "No, but did you find the code for tracking the locator beacon?"

"Yeah," he replied, "It took us a few minutes to make it through the defenses around their base and more to crack the code that they had put in their computer system, but we have it all."

"Good," Deathstroke replied as he adjusted his new cyber eye, "our hunt continues for the man who thought that he could fool me and get away with it, and we'll use his son to find him."

* * *

(**Back in Washington D.C...**)

It looked like a scene from busting evil, except we weren't making drugs in a schwarma truck. Temarius was doing his own thing measuring chemicals while Madison and Miranda were his lab assistants bringing him chemicals every now and then. It looked like we were up to no good in the neighborhood but we really weren't. After all, isn't making a special chemical compund that gives super powers to somehwat ordinary people legal?

...

Now that I think about it, maybe not, but we'll continue on anyways.

While everyone else was busy, and while Jessica was somewhere else in the labs, I decided to have my own tour of this building. I was really curious what this place looked like because of all the technology which I was looking at from room to room. One room had two people testing what looked like a car with no wheels, another had a dog that was speaking cantonese, and another room with so incredible that I couldn't belive it, instant bacon. There was so much to see, and yet my patience was wearing thin.

'_When is he going to be done with the formula?_' I thought as I stopped in the middle of the hallway.

My thoughts were broken when a man in a labcoat rammed into me with something in his hands and darted into a door down the hall.

"I wonder what he was running for?" I said to myself as I followed him.

There was a humming noise coming from the room that he entered and it kind of sounded like bees, but what would he have bees for? I turned the knob on the door as slow as I could and cracked the door just endough so that I could see inside and saw him working on something that filled up the center of the room. The man that ran into me was working on the thing in the dark and was talking to himself while he worked. I put my ear as close as I could to hear and only got one sentence out of it, "and this will make me famous, for I am Doctor Swansonjohnsonschmergenyergenovichistan!"

'_That's a freaking mouthful._' I thought as I crept into the room.

I quietly slid behind a crate that was close to me and continued to watch as he flipped a switch on the wall. The lights came on all round me and showed what the doctor had been working on. It looked like a ratty old cadillac that was sitting in the middle of the floor, but sometimes things aren't as they seem. Moments after the lights came on the car started changing shape. Gears shifted, paneling flipped, and it ultimately came out in the shape of a human, except for a skull of course.

The crazed scientist clapped his hands as the chest armor opened up to reveal a control center with all sorts of sensors and switches. He laughed maniacally as he got in the suit and closed it shut .

"Finally, I have the means to take on that fool Cyborg and show him who is boss!" he yelled in a crazed voice.

'_Cyborg? Why would this idiot have something against Cyborg?_'

I tried to make a step closer but something stopped me. For some reason everything suddenly became dark, so dark that I couldn't even see a foot away from me. The room all around me disappeared all together and I was left confused.

'_What is this?_'

Some way or another I started seeing things, but not through my own eyes. Through what I now considered someone else's mind I could see a large room with computers and a wide screen that was hanging from above. Something was playing on the screen, a video I assumed that involved fighting of some kind. I tried to focus on the screen and finally came up with the image on there. It was the Shadow Warriors, and from the looks of it they were fighting an unknown group of soldiers, and some familiar faces. The big question was, who's eyes was I looking through? Was I looking through the Shadow Man's or someone else entirely?

My question was answered when a familiar voice entered in.

"Master." said a heavily accented voice from across the room.

The eyes shifted around the tv screen and confirmed my suspicions.

"Yes Rift, what is it?" he replied.

"The sorceress has prepared the spell, and when Adrian falls he will be yours."

"Who is Adrian?" I asked myself.

The Shadow Man took a long and hearty sip of the drink that he currently had and slammed it down by his side. "Good, I cannot leave any loose ends that would link me to this whole incident that the fool had been concocting, and such an asset cannot be left to escape containment. Thank you for the information, you may leave."

The man that I first encountered after leaving the warriors created a portal behind him and disappeared. I stood still, shaking for a moment while the room became silent.

"What is going on?" I asked as the darkness disappeared.

"The Shadow Man is up to something and big, and all that i'm doing is just recruiting people. I need to be stopping him..."

"My boy you won't be stopping anything or anybody any time soon! For you have entered the lair of none other than Doctor Swansonjohnsonschmergenyergenovichistan!" The crazed scientist yelled as he lifted one massive, robotic, fist above his head.

"Vot Der'mo!" I yelled as he sent me through a few walls and out onto the parking lot.

As soon as I stopped skidding across the pavement like a tire, I stood up and reached for my desert eagles and forgot, I left them in the car. The half doctor, half machine came charging out of the hole that I had made in the wall and squashed the car beneath him.

My car was a few spaces down from me, and I know that my hammer and sickle would do nothing against the armor that the mad doctor had made, so I did what any good soldier would do...I called for backup.

"Iron John, where are you?"

A few seconds passed listening to the radio, and the doctor was heading my way.

'_What the hell is going on?_' I thought as I crawled behind an SUV.

"Where did you go little boy? Are you afraid of my beautiful creation?"

Of course I wasn't afraid of it. I was just using cover until I could call for backup.

"Hello, does anybody read? I have a crazy scientist in a suit of armor out in the parking lot and I don't have any weapons that can take him out."

I waited again for a response, and nothing came through yet again. The only sign that things were changing was the sound of John's RV...

'_Wait, what?_'

I peeked around the side of the SUV and looked to see where the scientist was standing, and the massive RV that was about to ram into him. Before the doctor could even react John's RV blindsided him and sent him halfway across the parking lot. John popped his head out the widow to watch the doctor fly into the freeway and right into a dump truck.

"Annnd it's good!" He said as he pumped his fist in the air.

Temarius and the others had finally responded to my message and came out, of course it was too late. All that was left of the doctor and his suit was a muffler and a small dent on the front of John's RV.

"So you just now decieded to answer my radio call?" I said with my arms crossed.

"Sorry boss, but the doctor over here just made an incredible discovery." said Jessica.

I looked over at Temarius who was now holding a vile of blue liquid in a sealed test tube. From what I could assume, it had to be the formula.

"I was able to isolate the supergenes in your friend's DNA and extract them to make a formula, but I need something to stabilize it."

"And what would that be?" I asked.

He reached in his pocket and pulled out a tablet, then tossed it to me.

"There's a facility in North Carolina that can help us since Star Labs doesn't have what I need."

looking further into the location I shook my head,"But this is a Lexcorp facility, we'd get get back on Luthor's shit list and fast."

Jessica shrugged her shoulders, "Lexcorp shmexcorp, we'll burn through that place and be out of there before the baldness can catch us."

Out of the corner of my eye I could see Madison shaking her head, "Madison, do you have a plan?"

"No, I just don't know how we're going to get in there without setting off an alarm."

Suddenly the radio came alive and Miranda was on there, "_I'm sure that you guys can figure out something later, but right now we have more pressing matters to attend to._"

I pressed a finger to my earpiece asked, "What do you mean?"

An explosion in the distance answered my question.

'_I guess it's time to play hero._'

* * *

**So a formula is in the making, one that could give ordinary people superpowers. The Shadow Man is building a team the likes of which rival Marcas', And slade had an encounter with the supernatural, or did he? Tune in next time and find out!**

**P.S. Sophie does not belong to me, she belongs to Enshohma of deviantart.**


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